Lomtadze: "Kaspi.kz - Made in Kazakhstan"

From October 27 to 28, 2021, the 2nd International PLAS Forum "Fintech Without Borders. Digital Eurasia" was held in the city of Almaty, during which a wide range of issues related to the further development of fintech and the payments business were discussed.

One of the highlights of the forum was the speech by the founder, shareholder, and chairman of Kaspi.kz, Mikhail Lomtadze. He began his speech with the words: "Kaspi.kz is a unique company founded in Kazakhstan. Our mission, - he continued, - is to create innovative services that improve the lives of our beloved customers. You won't see anything about the industry or the banking market in it."

What was the speech about?

Special emphasis was placed on the fact that the business model of Kaspi.kz is unique and has no analogues in the world. It is built in such a way that the company's client is at the center, and around him are daily needs that can be met thanks to the platforms collected in the Kaspi.kz app: "Payments," "Marketplace," "Fintech," and "Government Services". 

The popularity of the app is indicated by the fact that today, out of 19 million people in the population, 11 million use it, 6 million of whom visit it daily. 

Platforms Kaspi.kz

Users have access not only to money transfers but also to pay for more than 5,000 different services without commission.

The marketplace offers more than 1.2 million products to choose from with free delivery, which can be purchased with cash, installment, or credit. More than 80,000 partners are involved in this platform, most of whom are small and medium-sized enterprises that Kaspi.kz helps to sell their products online and in stores. 

Recently, Kaspi Travel was launched, where you can buy airline and train tickets. 

Thus, the company has been developing fintech for entrepreneurs for a year now, trying to provide as many loans for business development as possible. 

What additional services have appeared?

Government services online have appeared in the app. "Here we give Kazakhstani citizens the opportunity to use government services quickly, easily, and for free. We work together with government agencies at our own expense to make these services available to every citizen," Lomtadze noted proudly. 

Having only a phone and internet access, you can register a sole proprietorship, re-register a car, apply for a pension or child benefits. This protects against paper bureaucracy, allows elderly people and young parents not to waste their time in queues at the Citizen Service Centers, but to spend it productively.

A little about the Kaspi Gold card

The Kaspi Gold card is the most popular in the country and is used by 9 million Kazakhstani citizens. You can get the card yourself at the nearest Kaspi Cardomat, having ordered it in advance in the app. The Cardomat was developed by the Kaspi team in Kazakhstan and is considered a unique device because it prints a personalized card in just 60 seconds, whereas in other countries this process takes several days. 

Kaspi Gold became a catalyst for the growth of cashless payments. Thus, from December 2016 to June 2021, their volume in Kazakhstan grew 39 times from 161 billion tenge to 6.3 trillion tenge, and the share of cashless transactions in the total volume of payments increased from 15% to 77%. 

New technological solutions

Kazakhstan has one of the highest rates of growth in cashless payments (138% over 6 months compared to last year) in the world. This growth has not ended; it is still continuing. However, even such indicators did not stop the company from achieving more. New technological solutions became Smart POS and QR displays, which the company distributed for free to entrepreneurs. The number of these devices grew from 22,000 to 215,000 in a year.

Conclusion

The company allowed itself to boast about fulfilling the promise it made in 2018. By 2020, it was possible to conduct a successful IPO and put Kazakhstan on the world map of innovations. Moreover, in the same year, it became the 2nd largest IPO on the London Stock Exchange and the 4th in Europe.

Today, the capitalization of Kaspi.kz is $25 billion. "This is one of the largest fintech companies in the world," Mikhail added. For comparison, the capitalization of Yandex is about $27 billion. 

"Thank you all very much. Kaspi.kz - made in Kazakhstan",- thus concluding his speech, Mikhail did not miss the opportunity to emphasize that this unique business model is of domestic production.