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Kaspi.kz runs a super-app in Kazakhstan that combines a marketplace, a payments network, and a consumer bank, making money from shopping, transactions, and lending.
Kaspi.kz is Kazakhstan's everything app. People open it to buy a phone or a couch, pay a bill, send money to a friend, or get a small loan approved in under a minute. The company bundles three big businesses into one place: a shopping marketplace where third-party merchants sell goods, a payments system that moves money between people and businesses, and a bank that lends to consumers and takes deposits. Each piece feeds the others — you shop, you pay through Kaspi, and if you need credit, the bank already knows your history.
The payments business is the quiet engine. Kaspi's network processes the vast majority of card transactions in Kazakhstan, and merchants accept Kaspi QR codes the way shops elsewhere accept Visa. That gives the company a toll booth on everyday spending and, more importantly, a river of data on who buys what. The marketplace then uses that audience to attract merchants, who pay fees to sell on the platform, while the bank uses the same data to decide who deserves a loan and who doesn't. Customers stick around because leaving means giving up the wallet, the shopping, and the credit line all at once. The bank is where the real money risk and reward sit. Kaspi lends to consumers for purchases and cash needs, funded largely by customer deposits, and it has grown fast while keeping loan losses remarkably low by emerging-market standards. That combination — rapid growth with low losses — is unusual and is the core of the investment case. The main vulnerability is concentration: nearly all of this happens in one country, so Kazakhstan's economy, currency, and regulators have an outsized say in the company's fate.
Kaspi.kz began in 2002 when Vyacheslav Kim bought Caspian Bank, a small bank that had been sold off by the state. For a few years it grew slowly. Then in 2006 the investment firm Baring Vostok bought a stake, and a year later Mikheil Lomtadze joined the management team — and growth sped up.
In 2008 the bank got a new name: Caspian Bank became Kaspi Bank, and the company itself was registered as Joint Stock Company Kaspi.kz. A fresh name was the first step toward becoming a brand people in Kazakhstan would actually recognize.
Kaspi had started out in online shopping, but in 2015 it pushed into payments and consumer finance with Kaspi Pay and products from its bank. The point was simple: instead of being just a place to buy things, Kaspi became one app where people could pay, borrow, and shop — an integrated multi-service platform.
In 2019 Kaspi launched its own payment network built on Kaspi QR. A buyer scans a code with a phone, and the money goes straight to the merchant — no middlemen, no outside payment systems. Owning the pipes meant Kaspi kept more of the value flowing through its app.
In October 2020 Kaspi listed its shares on the London Stock Exchange. Going public gave the company a global stage and access to big investors — a long way from a small privatized bank.
In 2021 Kaspi bought the Portmone Group, a payment business, and entered the Ukrainian market. The deal came with banking and payment licenses in the region plus Visa and MasterCard accreditation in Ukraine — the paperwork you need to actually operate there.
In January 2024 Kaspi listed on Nasdaq at $92 a share, raising about a billion dollars. It was the first Kazakh company ever to list there, a signal that this regional app now wanted to be judged by the world's toughest investors.
In September 2024 the research firm Culper Research published a report claiming Kaspi had misled investors about how much exposure it had to Russia. The stock fell 16% in a single day. For a company that had just arrived on Nasdaq, it was a sharp reminder that global markets punish surprises.
In January 2025 Kaspi completed the purchase of a controlling stake in Hepsiburada, a Turkish e-commerce platform, for about $1.1 billion. It was the company's big move into Türkiye — the next step in its plan to grow beyond Kazakhstan.
By early 2026 Türkiye already made up half of Kaspi's e-commerce sales, which were growing fast. The CEO described a larger, more diversified platform building an international business, with a goal of reaching 100 million users. The small bank from 2002 now had its eyes on a much bigger map.
Kaspi listed on NASDAQ in 2024, giving American investors a rare direct window into a Central Asian tech-finance hybrid. It throws off a lot of cash and returns much of it to shareholders through dividends, while still investing in the app and adjacent services like travel and classifieds. The simple story: it owns the daily money habits of a whole country, and it gets paid a little every time those habits run through its pipes.
Saved answer · last researched 20 Oct 2026