A merchant checking a payment, an entrepreneur applying for a business loan, and an employee accessing earned pay face different financial tasks. Their needs should shape any useful comparison of the top fintech companies in Kazakhstan. For a product team, each category offers a different benchmark and requires a different research brief.
Kaspi.kz, Halyk, Asian Credit Fund, and Prosper Pay illustrate four distinct perspectives. The selection spans banking, microfinance, and a specialist employee service
It should be noted that this article is not a ranking of product quality or financial strength. Each example suggests a different research agenda.
Kaspi.kz and the two sides of a transaction
Kaspi.kz describes a two-sided model in its 2025 annual report: the Kaspi.kz app serves consumers, while Kaspi Pay serves merchants and entrepreneurs. Its Kazakhstan business combines payments, a marketplace, and financial services. That makes it a useful reference for examining connections between buying, paying, and managing a business.
A design brief should follow those connections beyond the customer’s confirmation screen.
- Can a merchant identify the corresponding transaction?
- What happens when an order changes or a customer requests a refund?
- Who explains a discrepancy?
These are research questions, rather than claims about weaknesses in Kaspi’s products.
For a company building a narrower service, the relevant lesson is the need to understand both participants’ records and expectations. Commissioning an impressive customer interface without investigating merchant operations leaves half the transaction unexplored.
Everyday banking through Halyk
Halyk’s official app guide lists digital card opening, transfers, online deposit management, and loan services. It also describes card controls such as setting a PIN. This makes Halyk a reference point for digital banking in Kazakhstan across both product acquisition and ongoing account management.
For a bank planning a redesign, a feature inventory has limited value on its own. Research should establish whether customers understand the money available to them, recognize which account they are using, and find help when a routine task becomes unfamiliar. A returning customer replacing a card may need a different path from someone opening an account for the first time.
Include those service situations in the initial scope. Otherwise, the project can produce a polished onboarding flow while leaving established customers’ most important problems untouched.
The borrowing context at Asian Credit Fund
Asian Credit Fund (ACF) represents a different part of fintech in Kazakhstan. It is a microfinance organization focused on households and small enterprises. An IFC project disclosure describes financing for underserved rural microenterprises, including agricultural borrowers and women-owned businesses, alongside support for risk management and digitalization.
For a lender commissioning UX work, this changes whom to recruit and what to investigate. Research with salaried urban app users cannot establish how an agricultural borrower understands a repayment schedule. Ask participants to explain the proposed payment dates, the total amount repayable, and what happens if their income arrives later than expected. Observe where they need clarification rather than assuming that a completed application demonstrates understanding.
Ergomania’s overview of fintech in Kazakhstan adds interview-based context on ACF’s digitization work and the differences between bank ecosystems, rural lending, and early wage access. Those perspectives help identify questions for local research, but they do not establish that one service model suits every customer.
Prosper Pay connects early pay with payroll
Prosper Pay illustrates earned wage access (EWA). Its provider describes a service through which employees can access part of their already-earned pay before the usual payday, with information passed to the employer’s accounting system for payroll deduction. This is a different product task from applying for a microloan.
The provider also describes transaction fees. A team designing an EWA journey should therefore test whether employees understand the amount they will receive, any charge, and the effect on their later paycheck. Presenting an available balance without that context can leave the user uncertain about what remains to be paid.
The employer’s workflow belongs in the research too. A hypothetical pilot should include a corrected earnings record and a failed transfer, so the team can determine who updates the information and who resolves the employee’s question. The service depends on that operational agreement as much as its withdrawal screen.
Turn the comparison of fintech companies in Kazakhstan into a UX research brief
Before commissioning work from a UX agency, name the customer group, the financial task, and the organizations involved in completing it. Then choose relevant fintech companies in Kazakhstan as comparison points. Ask the research partner to explain which journeys it will examine, how it will recruit local participants, and how findings will change the design scope.
The resulting brief should specify observable outcomes: a borrower explaining repayment terms, a merchant tracing a disputed transaction, or an employee anticipating the next paycheck. Those outcomes give the project a clearer purpose than reproducing the feature list of a prominent app.
