Kazakhstan May Allow Crypto Payments for Goods and Services

Kazakhstan is moving toward legalizing regulated cryptocurrency turnover and expanding crypto-fiat payment tools, as National Bank governor Timur Suleimenov says digital financial assets could become a new sector of the country’s financial market, Orda.kz reports.

According to him, the financial system has traditionally been built around banks, insurance companies, loans and bonds. However, technological development is opening up new instruments — tokenized assets, digital bonds and crypto-fiat payment channels.

In fact, a whole new industry of the financial market is opening up. Suleimenov said. 

He named the democratization of access to finance as one of the key advantages of digital financial assets. For example, a developer can tokenize real estate — a residential complex or individual apartments — and sell shares to investors in the form of digital tokens.

According to Suleimenov, this could create new competition for traditional banks.

A separate area will be the legalization and regulation of cryptocurrency turnover. Cryptocurrencies are already actively used, he said, but in many ways they remain outside the legal framework.

We all know that bitcoins and other cryptocurrencies are used quite actively here, but outside the legal circuit. But why fight it with the help of the Criminal Code? It is better to force crypto exchangers to be licensed, regulate them, demand compliance with AML/TF, banking legislation, payment legislation, compliance with the requirements of tax legislation — and let them engage in this activity and do it in the legal perimeter.he said. 

Instead of strict bans, the regulator proposes building a licensing system for crypto exchangers and obliging them to comply with anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing requirements, tax rules and payment regulation.

According to Suleimenov, two banks are already issuing crypto-fiat cards that allow users to pay for purchases from stablecoin accounts. When paying, the funds are automatically converted into tenge.

Two more banks, according to the head of the National Bank, are preparing to launch similar products.

That is, there are quite a lot of such projects. And I hope that we will gradually start transferring them from the ‘sandbox’ mode, as regulation appears, to the generally established regime. And we will see it as consumers every day. Suleimenov added. 

The National Bank believes that the development of the digital financial assets market can give an additional impetus to the development of the fintech sector and Kazakhstan’s economy as a whole.

Original author: Ilya Astakhov

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