The share of cashless payments abroad reached 93%. Online purchases and smartphone transfers drove the growth, while POS terminal transactions began to decline.
Over six years, the volume of cashless transactions on Kazakhstani cards abroad increased more than tenfold. By mid-2026, the market firmly cemented the shift away from cash in international travel and cross-border commerce.
What happened
In January–May 2026, Kazakhstanis spent 2.1 trillion tenge abroad using cashless methods. According to Ranking.kz, this is 15.3% more than a year earlier. For comparison, during the same period in 2020, the figure was only 207.3 billion tenge.
The share of cashless payments in total foreign card turnover reached 93.3% (up from 76% in 2020).
The number of transactions is growing much faster than volumes: over five months, cardholders made 150.6 million transactions. This is 40.4% more than last year’s result and 6.6 times higher than the 2020 figures.
How the payment structure is changing
Internet and mobile phone transactions became the main channel for foreign spending. Over the year, their volume grew by almost a third, reaching 1.3 trillion tenge. This segment now accounts for 62.9% of all cashless transactions by Kazakhstanis outside the country.
Meanwhile, traditional payments through physical POS terminals in foreign stores and venues dropped by 4.4% to 689.9 billion tenge.
The average amount of a single foreign transaction noticeably decreased over the year—by 17.9%, from 16,800 to 13,800 tenge. The peak average receipt was recorded in 2023 at 17,000 tenge.
Why it matters
The drop in the average receipt amid explosive transaction growth shows that foreign cashless payments have become a daily routine: Kazakhstanis increasingly use cards for small, regular charges—paying for digital services, subscriptions, and inexpensive marketplace purchases—not just for large tourist expenses. The banking infrastructure successfully adapted to serve cross-border e-commerce, shifting focus from physical plastic to digital channels.