BAKU, Azerbaijan, October 9. The volume of
transactions made using payment cards issued by Kazakh banks
reached 20.2 trillion tenge (about $45.7 billion) in August 2026,
while the number of transactions amounted to 1.3 billion, according
to the National Bank of Kazakhstan.


Compared with August 2025, the number of non-cash transactions
increased by 7.6% to 1.3 billion, while their volume grew by 6.1%
to 17.9 trillion tenge (about $40.5 billion).


Payment card holders made 18.8 million cash withdrawal
transactions worth 2.3 trillion tenge (about $5.2 billion). The
number of cash withdrawal transactions decreased by 8.8% compared
with August 2025, while their volume declined by 8.7%.


As of September 1, 2026, payment cards were issued by 18 banks
and Kazpost JSC. These organizations issue and distribute payment
cards of international systems, including Visa International and
Mastercard Worldwide, as well as cards of the local Kaspi.kz
system.


As of September 1, 2026, 84.3 million payment cards were in
circulation in Kazakhstan. Debit cards accounted for 81.7% of the
total, credit cards for 15.5%, while debit cards with a credit
limit and prepaid cards accounted for 2.9%.


According to Trend
calculations, August data show that the decline in cash usage was
driven primarily by a lower frequency of withdrawals rather than a
reduction in the average amount withdrawn.







Cash withdrawals accounted for about 11.4% of total card
transaction volume but only about 1.4% of the total number of
transactions. This means there was approximately one cash
withdrawal for every 69 non-cash transactions.


The average cash withdrawal amounted to about 122,000 tenge
(about $276), compared with approximately 13,800 tenge (about $31)
for an average non-cash transaction.


The number of cash withdrawal transactions declined by 8.8%
year-on-year, while their volume fell by 8.7%, indicating that the
average withdrawal amount remained almost unchanged in nominal
terms, increasing by about 0.1%.


With annual inflation at 9.8% in August 2026, the broadly
unchanged nominal average withdrawal corresponds to an estimated
decline of about 9% in real terms.


The conversions were made at the rate of $1 = 441.88 tenge.