The Astana International Financial Centre (AIFC) regulator has granted fintech holding OSON permission to work with digital assets and conduct investment activities. Businesses and private investors in Kazakhstan are gaining a legal channel between bank accounts and digital assets. However, the license operates in a test mode, and the new products so far remain at the planning stage.
For OSON, this is the next step after Dubai, where the group already holds a DFSA license. Both financial centres operate on the principles of English common law, and through them the company intends to connect the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region with Central Asia.
What the AFSA license permits
The Astana Financial Services Authority (AFSA), the AIFC regulator, issued the license to OSON's subsidiary on November 9. Document No. AFSA-A-LA-2026-0033 operates within the FinTech Lab — a special regime for testing new financial products.
The company has been granted rights in three areas. The first is money services in the digital assets sphere, that is, payments and transfers involving them. The second and third are dealing in investments as principal and brokerage operations on behalf of clients. In practice, OSON can legally connect banking channels with digital assets and build infrastructure for exchange, settlement, and investment in Kazakhstan on that basis.
OSON Holding founder and CEO Farkhod Makhmudov called the license a fundamental step. According to him, Kazakhstan "is setting the pace across the entire region when it comes to progressive regulation of digital assets and fintech," and OSON is coming to Astana as an institutional participant. The company is building a transparent and technologically advanced bridge between banking infrastructure, the digital economy, and international capital markets.
Operations in the AIFC comply with international anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing (AML/CFT) standards. Risks are assessed by an AI algorithm developed at OSON's research office. With the new license, the holding plans to launch a card and transfers based on stablecoins from various countries. The company is not yet naming any timelines, so clients should not expect ready-made services just yet.
What else is changing in Kazakhstan's financial market
The ITS platform recently launched contracts on Anthropic's IPO and on the National Bank's December rate decision — in the same FinTech Lab sandbox. This section, like OSON's license, operates in test mode: a correct forecast can bring a payout dozens of times larger than the amount invested, but if wrong, the investor loses the entire sum.
Kazakhstan's National Bank for the first time offered investors notes worth 50 billion tenge ($111.4 million) in both conventional and tokenized format at once. The minimum bid for digital securities is 5 million tenge, so for now they are aimed at banks and large investors. However, digital assets are ceasing to be the niche of fintech companies like OSON: the state itself is now issuing them.
Meanwhile, brokers in Kazakhstan have begun checking purchases of non-cash currency by individuals exceeding $3 million per day and by companies exceeding $10 million. These thresholds will not affect ordinary citizens. It is easier for foreign partners to work where large currency flows are transparent, and these are precisely the counterparties from MENA countries that OSON is counting on.
Cryptalist analysis: The OSON case demonstrates the formation in Kazakhstan of a regulated framework for stablecoin settlements, which strengthens the AIFC's competition with Dubai's DFSA for capital and fintech talent in the MENA–Central Asia region. For now, this is a sandbox without specific launch dates, so the real effect on the market will depend on how quickly products exit the test regime and on banks' readiness to integrate digital assets into their channels.