Over the past week, mobile applications of banks in Central Asia and Azerbaijan received more than twenty updates. Developers are shifting focus from basic transfers to Open Banking elements, managing the client’s digital footprint, and expanding scenarios for QR payments.
Trend of the Week: Controlling Routine and Subscriptions
Banks are starting to give users more control over their regular expenses and shared data. Several players in Azerbaijan simultaneously rolled out tools for managing paid subscriptions on Visa cards directly in the app. In parallel, interfaces are appearing for tracking consents granted to third-party services—this is a practical application of Open Banking for the retail client.
Banks are turning their apps into unified control panels for financial routines: from monitoring invisible subscription charges to revoking account access.
Kazakhstan
Bank CenterCredit maintains a high pace of releases. According to the description in the official stores, a section with privileges for premium Visa cards and support for discounts when paying via UnionPay QR appeared in bcc.kz. Also, the app’s release notes mention the addition of an option to repay loans using lump-sum pension withdrawals.
The release notes for ForteBusiness for corporate clients announce the addition of a feature to get an electronic queue ticket via a QR code.
Uzbekistan
TBC Bank Uzbekistan updated the logic for working with savings. Judging by the description in the App Store, term deposits are now renewed automatically, and the ability to make partial withdrawals has been added.
The Islamic fintech Iman released a technical update: the operation of QR payments has been improved, errors when opening and extending investments have been fixed, and the display of conversions and tariffs has been adjusted.
Kyrgyzstan
According to the release notes, KICB is expanding the geography of cross-border operations. The update announces Zolotaya Korona transfers to IBAN accounts in Turkey and top-ups of Chinese WeChat and Alipay wallets.
In the MegaPay app, onboarding for eSIM has been simplified: the selection of paid numbers has been added, and identity verification has been accelerated.
Tajikistan
Alif Bank is connecting online installments with physical infrastructure. The stores indicate that clients can now repay BNPL payments by scanning a QR code at the bank’s cash desks. Previously, the fintech focused on integrating government services and B2B solutions, and now hybrid offline acquiring is being developed.
Azerbaijan
Update of the week ⭐: UBank by Unibank officially confirmed the launch of issuing cash loans with signing via the SİMA digital signature. At the same time, the app’s release notes announce the launch of an Open Banking hub: clients can view and revoke consents granted to other banks for access to account information.
ABB mobile continues to develop AI assistants, which Finteqstan wrote about earlier. Now AI-nur and AI-khan visually analyze transactions and manage Visa card subscriptions. A similar feature for managing Visa subscriptions through the app was rolled out by PASHA Bank, which also added the ordering of a Miles&Smiles card.
Birbank added the display of earned bonuses directly into the payment history, continuing past updates to improve UX. Leobank expanded the payment menu in the sports and entertainment category, and m10 released a minor update focusing on interface speed.