Almaty, 30 October. Widespread adoption of AI agents — programs that, on a person’s instruction, pay agreed bills, select goods and services and can be linked to a bank account or card — may begin in Kazakhstan in 2027, said Deputy Governor of the National Bank Binur Zhalenov.
“For Kazakhstan this is the next stage in developing payment infrastructure. Fast payments and Open Banking provide the foundation. On top of it a mechanism will be needed to safely entrust a transaction to one’s AI assistant, regardless of which bank a person uses. That is what we are working on now,” Zhalenov said. What rules and limits such agents will have, who is liable for an erroneous payment and how a customer revokes an instruction, the National Bank has not yet explained.
A payment AI agent differs from a familiar automatic payment in that it makes decisions itself within set rules: for example, it finds the cheapest ticket and pays for it if the price is below a threshold. Worldwide such services are now being launched by Visa, Mastercard and major AI model developers.
What it means: The regulator is preparing a separate secure entry for AI assistants into the payment system — in the same way that Open Banking opened banking data to third-party apps with the customer’s consent.
Who benefits: Customers get fewer routine payments. Banks and fintech companies gain a new market. The risks are fraud and agent errors that criminals could exploit; the rules for allocating them have yet to be written.
Background: Open Banking is the exchange of data and payment orders between banks and third-party services through standard software interfaces with the customer’s consent; in Kazakhstan it is being introduced by the National Bank. The instant payment system lets money be transferred between any banks around the clock within seconds. The National Bank is also developing the digital tenge.
