Three years ago, eResidency was built on a new approach to attracting foreign capital — not only through commodity projects, investment deals or borrowing, but through people: foreign nationals who choose Kazakhstan for financial transactions and for keeping their funds.
Today this model is already working and generating a new financial flow into the country.
International capital through digital infrastructure
Through just one international transfer channel, non-residents moved $3.3 billion into Kazakhstan over the year — around 1.5 trillion tenge.
These funds become part of the country’s financial ecosystem: foreign clients make payments, convert currency and hold balances in their accounts. This creates additional turnover for Kazakhstan’s financial sector and expands its international client base.
eResidency’s own metrics also show the growing economic activity of foreign users.
As of today, e-residents hold around $31 million in their accounts. Since the beginning of the year, card purchases have amounted to about $70 million, and currency-exchange operations have reached roughly $90 million.
This is capital attracted into Kazakhstan and working inside its financial infrastructure.
Security and compliance are a mandatory condition
Expanding foreign clients’ access to the financial system is impossible without strict controls.
Every eResidency participant undergoes comprehensive verification, including sanctions screening, customer identification, source-of-funds checks and other required compliance procedures.
The program’s principle is not the broadest possible access, but a convenient digital mechanism for bona fide foreign users while maintaining high standards of security and transparency.
A new stage for Kazakhstan’s fintech
Changes in the regulation of Kazakhstan’s payments industry open up additional opportunities for market development.
From October, first-category payment organizations will be able to expand the range of financial services they provide, including issuing payment instruments and electronic money and interacting with the national payment infrastructure.
Combined with eResidency’s capabilities, this could create the basis for scalable fintech products in Kazakhstan aimed not only at the domestic market but also at the international one.
The potential of this direction is especially clear against the backdrop of the volume of non-residents’ cross-border operations. If the international financial flow is already measured in billions of dollars, the task of the next stage is to build infrastructure that lets a larger share of it pass through Kazakhstan’s financial system.
Kazakhstan as a regional point of attraction
Interest in the digital residency model is also emerging in other Central Asian countries. This shows that competition for international digital clients and the financial flows associated with them will intensify.
For eResidency, developing this model specifically as a competitive advantage for Kazakhstan remains a strategic priority.
This is not only about attracting foreign users. Over time, a whole ecosystem forms around them: banking and payment services, currency operations, fintech products and other digital services.
The global market is moving in the same direction
Similar processes are taking place in other markets as well.
In Turkey, the ability to remotely onboard foreign clients using passports equipped with NFC chips is being developed.
NFC-verification technology is already one of the key elements of eResidency Kazakhstan. The passport is read directly through the app, which makes it possible to automatically verify the document’s data, increase the reliability of identification and reduce the impact of human error.
The spread of such technologies across other markets shows that remote digital identification of foreigners is gradually becoming part of modern financial infrastructure.
More than a digital service
eResidency is not just a way to give a foreigner remote access to individual financial services.
It is a tool for attracting international capital and clients, developing Kazakhstan’s fintech and integrating the country into the global digital economy.
The next stage is to turn the infrastructure that has been built into a scalable ecosystem capable of competing for international users and financial flows.
This is exactly where Kazakhstan has the opportunity to create a new export direction — not of commodities, but of financial and digital services.
