The National Bank of Kazakhstan is accelerating the shift to digital money: the regulator intends to increase the volume of the digital tenge and, together with the Ministry of Finance, issue tokenized government bonds. For citizens, this promises even faster cashless settlements, while for investors it opens a new way to invest in government debt. The main risk is that the infrastructure for such instruments is only being built, and market demand for them has yet to be tested.
National Bank Chairman Timur Suleimenov presented these plans at the annual Congress of Financiers of Kazakhstan. According to his data, inflation has been declining for 12 consecutive months and currently stands at 9.2%, and by 2028 it is planned to be brought down to 5%. Banks issued 16.6 trillion tenge in new loans to businesses over nine months — 19.5% more than a year earlier.
What the National Bank plans for the digital tenge
Digital settlements have already changed the habits of Kazakhstanis. The volume of cashless payments by the population has grown 116-fold over ten years, to 190 trillion tenge, and they now account for about 90% of retail turnover. About 75 million transactions worth 1.4 trillion tenge passed through the Unified QR and phone-number transfer system in just four months of its operation.
On this foundation, the regulator is building the next stage. The central bank plans to increase the volume of the digital tenge and deploy it in the "Halyktyk Qurylys" initiative. Such money is issued and accounted for by the National Bank itself, so the state can track the movement of every amount.
In parallel, the digital assets market is also growing. Eight official crypto exchanges with a total turnover of 45 billion tenge already operate in the country. Together with the Ministry of Finance, the regulator is preparing the issuance of tokenized government bonds — and then the digital format could become a routine way for the state to borrow money.
How Kazakhstan is adopting digital finance
The National Bank has already tested tokenization: four days ago it for the first time offered investors notes worth 50 billion tenge ($111.4 million) in both regular and digital format at once. The minimum bid for the digital version is 5 million tenge, so for now such securities are suitable for banks, brokers and institutional investors, not private individuals.
Private fintech is also adopting digital assets: the AIFC regulator AFSA issued a license to a subsidiary of the OSON holding within the FinTech Lab sandbox. With it, the holding plans to launch a card and stablecoin-based transfers, but it has not yet named any timelines.
The ITS platform recently launched contracts on the Anthropic IPO and on the National Bank's December rate decision in the same sandbox. A correct forecast can bring a payout dozens of times the investment, but if wrong, the investor loses all their money.
Cryptalist analysis: Kazakhstan is consistently building a full contour of digital finance — from the retail digital tenge to tokenized government debt and regulated crypto platforms. For institutional investors, this is a signal of the emergence of a new liquid instrument with sovereign risk, but the success of the initiative will depend on real demand and the maturity of the infrastructure. The market will have to assess whether tokenization of government debt becomes a mass practice or remains a pilot.