Joint Stock Co Kaspi.kz (KSPI)

The convergence strategy: payments, e-commerce, and lending in one app

Kaspi.kz operates an integrated financial platform in Kazakhstan and adjacent Central Asian markets. The company started in 2000 as a payment processor, then evolved into a super-app: a single application where a user can pay bills, transfer money, buy goods from an online marketplace, apply for a loan or credit card, and purchase insurance. The business model is to be the financial connector for users who lack access to traditional banking infrastructure and for merchants who need payment processing and logistics. It is described often as the Alibaba, Tencent, or WeChat of Kazakhstan — a catch-all financial and commerce platform, not a single-service specialist.

The appeal is straightforward in emerging markets where traditional banking is inconvenient or inaccessible: a Kazakhstani consumer without a bank account can use Kaspi to pay utility bills, receive a salary transfer, buy goods online, and borrow money, all from one app, all without ever visiting a physical bank. A merchant without payment infrastructure can list products on Kaspi’s marketplace, accept Kaspi payments, and use Kaspi’s logistics network to deliver goods. That convenience and comprehensiveness is powerful in markets where friction and trust in financial institutions matter a lot.

How Kaspi makes money

The platform generates revenue from three principal streams. First, payment processing: when a user transfers money or a merchant accepts a Kaspi payment, Kaspi takes a small percentage as a transaction fee. Second, lending: Kaspi originated and retained a growing book of consumer loans and credit cards, earning interest on the outstanding balance and the spread between what it borrows and what it lends out. Third, the marketplace and advertising: Kaspi takes a commission from merchants on sales through its platform, and it sells advertising slots to merchants on the app.

The lending business is the most profitable per transaction but also the highest-risk. Consumer lending in emerging markets involves credit risk that in more mature markets would be evaluated using decades of credit history and standardised underwriting. Kaspi instead relies on alternative data — transaction history on the platform, payment behaviour, rent payments, salary deposits — to assess creditworthiness. This is a frontier of financial inclusion: people with no credit score can access credit. But it also means Kaspi must absorb losses when borrowers cannot repay, and it must estimate losses conservatively.

The Kazakhstani context and expansion ambitions

Kazakhstan has a population of roughly 20 million people, a resource-based economy centred on oil and gas and mining, and an urban middle class concentrated in Almaty and the capital, Astana. The country has no giant domestic technology company, so Kaspi filled that role for financial services and e-commerce. Its user base is concentrated in these urban centres, but the company has ambitions to expand across Central Asia — Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, potentially further afield. This expansion is early-stage; the home market is still the dominant revenue source.

The economic context matters. Kazakhstan has foreign-exchange controls (the tenge, the currency, is not freely convertible), a growing consumer base, and limited competition for a comprehensive fintech platform. Yet it is also dependent on oil and gas revenues, which means the economy is cyclical and vulnerable to commodity-price shocks. The government has been supportive of financial innovation, so regulatory risk is less acute than it might be in some other emerging markets.

The economics of serving a smaller, developing market

Kaspi’s TAM (total addressable market) is much smaller than that of fintech platforms in China or India. Kazakhstan’s 20 million people and the broader Central Asian region (perhaps 80 million people total) limits the revenue scale the company can reach before it has saturated the market or matured its growth rate. This is fundamentally different from Futu or Moomoo, which have access to hundreds of millions of potential users in China and Asia.

Kaspi’s response is to extract maximum value per user by deepening the penetration of lending and the marketplace. If a user uses Kaspi only for bill payments, the company earns a tiny transaction fee; if the same user also takes a loan at 20 percent interest, uses the marketplace regularly, and maintains an average balance, the lifetime value is far higher. The company calls this “wallet expansion” — persuading users to use more of the platform’s services. The higher the wallet size, the higher the company’s take-rate and the more profitable it becomes per customer.

Competitive position and medium-term challenges

Kaspi has almost no direct competitors in Kazakhstan for an integrated fintech super-app. This is partly because it got there first and achieved scale, partly because barriers to entry in financial services (regulation, capital requirements) are high, and partly because the market is small enough that only one or two comprehensive platforms can exist.

The real risks are different. First, traditional banks are increasingly digitising and might launch competitive apps. Second, if Central Asian governments tighten regulation around consumer lending, particularly around interest rates (Kazakhstan has occasional populist pressure to cap rates), Kaspi’s highest-margin business would shrink. Third, expansion into new countries is slower and more challenging than growth in the home market; the company is investing heavily and seeing losses from international operations. Fourth, macroeconomic stress in Kazakhstan — a recession, a currency crisis, a decline in oil revenues — could sharply reduce consumer spending, lending demand, and transaction volumes.

How to research Kaspi.kz

Investors should begin with the 10-K (SEC CIK 0001985487), which breaks revenue by segment (payments, lending, marketplace, insurance, other services), discloses loan portfolio composition and credit-loss rates, and details the regulatory environment and concentration risk (Kaspi’s exposure to a small country and currency). Quarterly earnings calls reveal user growth trends, transaction volumes, credit metrics, and the pace and profitability of international expansion.

Key metrics: monthly active users and growth rates (a leading indicator of marketplace and payments volume); the loan portfolio size and credit-loss rates (a measure of lending risk and underwriting quality); revenue per user (rising suggests wallet expansion and deepening monetisation); and the net interest margin (the spread between what Kaspi pays for deposits and what it earns on lending, a driver of profitability). Watch macroeconomic news from Kazakhstan closely — currency moves, oil prices, political announcements — as these have outsize influence on consumer behaviour and the health of the lending portfolio.