Joint Stock Company Kaspi.kz (KSPI) - Deep Dive Research Report

Prepared: May 11, 2026 | Based on four concall periods: Q2 2025 (Aug 4), Q3 2025 (Nov 10), Q4 2025 (Mar 2, 2026), Q1 2026 (May 11, 2026)

Section 1: What the Company Does

Kaspi.kz is a Kazakhstani technology company that functions as the country's digital financial and commercial infrastructure. If you live in Kazakhstan, Kaspi is how you pay for things, how you shop online, how you get a consumer loan in seconds, how you pay your utility bills, and how your salary moves between accounts. The company built an integrated mobile platform so dominant in one country that ~85% of all cashless transactions in Kazakhstan run through it.

The founding story matters because it explains the architecture. In 2002, Vyacheslav Kim - who ran Planet Elektroniki, one of Kazakhstan's largest electronics retailers - found that he couldn't sell enough refrigerators and televisions because customers couldn't afford them upfront. Consumer credit barely existed. His solution was blunt: he acquired a small recently privatized bank, Kaspiyskiy Bank, to provide financing for his own customers. It started as a captive financing vehicle, not a grand vision.

The transformation arrived in 2007 when Mikheil Lomtadze, a Georgian-born executive with a Harvard MBA and backing from Baring Vostok Capital Partners, joined as CEO. Lomtadze and Kim shared a conviction that Kazakhstan's digitization was years behind its potential, and that a technology-first bank - rather than a branch-first bank - could capture the entire market. Through the 2010s, they built mobile payment infrastructure at a time when Visa and Mastercard barely penetrated Kazakhstan, created a QR payment standard that all merchants adopted, and then layered consumer lending on top of the payments data.

By 2020, when the company listed on the London Stock Exchange (and later in 2023 on NASDAQ), it had evolved into what the company calls a "Super App" - two apps actually: Kaspi.kz for consumers and Kaspi Pay for merchants. Every product in the company's portfolio runs through these two entry points. Today Kaspi has approximately 15 million monthly active Kaspi.kz app users in a country of 20 million people. Monthly engagement is 77 transactions per consumer - a figure management compares to leading global platforms.

The core value proposition is extreme convenience within a single trusted ecosystem. A Kazakhstani consumer can see a smartphone on Kaspi's marketplace, finance it with an instant loan at checkout, pay with Kaspi QR (or palm-vein biometrics via the new Kaspi Alaqan system), have it delivered next day, and put surplus income into a Kaspi fixed-term deposit - all without leaving the app. The switching cost is not a contract or a fee; it's the fact that Kaspi is the only system where all of this works together, seamlessly, instantly.

The technical difficulty of replication is substantial. Kaspi built proprietary domestic payment rails (not dependent on Visa/Mastercard for domestic transactions), a real-time loan underwriting engine fed by payment behavioral data, a nationwide merchant acceptance network (600,000+ merchants), a logistics and dark-store network for grocery delivery, and most recently a palm-vein biometric payment system. Each layer reinforces the others.

Section 2: Business Segments

Kaspi operates three defined segments in Kazakhstan - Payments, Marketplace, and Fintech - plus the recently acquired Turkish Hepsiburada e-commerce platform, which is consolidated into the Marketplace segment at the group level from January 2025.

Payments

Kaspi's Payments platform is the foundation on which everything else sits. Its job is to process every financial transaction a Kazakhstani consumer or merchant initiates - bill payments, peer-to-peer transfers, QR merchant payments, government services (taxes, fines, licensing fees), and international transfers. In Q1 2026, Payments processed KZT 11.4 trillion (~$23.7 billion) of Total Payment Volume (TPV), growing 14% year-on-year.

The core capability Kaspi spent two decades building is a proprietary domestic payment network that is not dependent on international card schemes for domestic transactions. When a Kaspi user pays a Kaspi merchant, the settlement happens inside Kaspi's ledger, and the economics belong entirely to Kaspi. This is fundamentally different from a business that sits on top of Visa rails and earns a small slice of interchange. Kaspi is the rail.

The Kaspi QR standard became the de facto national payment standard in Kazakhstan. Every significant merchant - from hypermarkets to roadside stalls - accepts Kaspi QR. In Q2 2025, Kaspi QR volume grew 128% year-on-year, reflecting continued shift from cash and card to app-based payments. The take rate on QR is lower than on traditional card transactions, which has diluted the blended Payments take rate slightly as QR becomes dominant.

Kaspi Alaqan, the palm-vein biometric payment system launched in Almaty in late 2025, represents the next generation of frictionless payment. The technology uses near-infrared imaging to scan the unique vein pattern in a customer's palm at merchant POS terminals - no phone needed, no card needed. Within 90 days of the Almaty launch, Kaspi reported 500,000 consumer registrations and adoption by approximately 6,000 merchants, reaching 10% of connected merchant transactions in Almaty. This is a genuinely hard technology to deploy (requiring hardware at merchant locations and biometric enrollment for each consumer) and is consistent with Kaspi's pattern of reducing payment friction at each iteration.

Kaspi also opened its payment network to Kazakhstan's National Bank Interbank Payment Service in late 2024 - a defensive move that preempts regulatory pressure to create competing rails while expanding Kaspi's network to users who would have otherwise used the government system.

Competitive position: Kaspi processes ~85% of Kazakhstan's cashless transactions. Halyk Bank is the only entity with meaningful payment infrastructure. The competitive moat here is the merchant acceptance network (would take years to replicate), consumer habit (every adult in Kazakhstan has Kaspi on their phone), and the data flywheel from processing daily financial behavior.

Role in the group: The Payments segment is the flywheel starter. It generates transaction fees, creates consumer behavioral data that funds Fintech underwriting, and drives traffic to the Marketplace. Revenue grew 7% in Q1 2026 - slower than the rest of the business - but it is the infrastructure that makes the rest possible.

Marketplace

Kaspi's Marketplace is the commercial layer built on the payment rails. It enables consumers to buy physical goods (electronics, fashion, home goods, sporting equipment), travel (flights, hotels), event tickets, and groceries through the Kaspi.kz app. Merchants list products, consumers discover and buy them, and Kaspi handles payments, financing integration, and increasingly, delivery logistics.

The critical capability is the seamless financing integration at checkout. When a consumer selects a product on Kaspi's marketplace, they can pay in installments with a Kaspi loan approved in seconds - without opening a separate application, visiting a bank, or providing additional documentation. This drives both higher average order values and higher conversion rates than any standalone e-commerce competitor can achieve. It is the reason Kaspi's marketplace take rate (revenue as a percentage of GMV) reached an all-time high of 13.1% in Q4 2025 (12.7% full-year) - a figure that would be enviable for any global marketplace.

In Q1 2026, Kaspi's consolidated e-commerce GMV grew 41% to KZT 1.3 trillion, with e-commerce revenue growing 58%. Consumer purchase frequency improved to 15 purchases per quarter, compared with 10.4 in Q1 2025 - a 44% increase in engagement intensity that reflects both deeper penetration of existing users and improved selection.

E-grocery is the highest-growth sub-segment. Kaspi built a dark-store network (small warehouses optimized for rapid picking) now operating in at least five major Kazakhstani cities, delivering groceries with same- or next-day service. GMV grew 53% in FY2025 and 57% in Q2 2025. This is a capital-intensive operation but benefits from Kaspi's existing consumer relationships and the financing infrastructure.

Advertising is an emerging high-margin revenue layer. Merchants pay Kaspi to promote their products within the app and on third-party platforms. Revenue grew 56% in Q3 2025 and 67% in Q2 2025 - faster than any other revenue line. As the marketplace matures and merchant competition for visibility intensifies, advertising becomes a structurally higher-margin business than transaction fees.

Hepsiburada (Turkey) is the international expansion within the Marketplace segment. Kaspi acquired a 65.4% controlling interest in Hepsiburada, Turkey's second or third-largest e-commerce platform, for approximately $1.127 billion (announced late 2024, closed January 29, 2025). The acquisition gives Kaspi access to Turkey's 85 million consumers and a platform already processing meaningful e-commerce volume.

Kaspi's Turkey integration playbook has three pillars: improve delivery speed (next-day shipping coverage went from 47% to 63% by Q4 2025), upgrade the mobile app to Kaspi's product standards, and introduce fintech products (enabled by the pending Rabobank A.S. acquisition, a fully licensed Turkish bank Kaspi agreed to acquire for its banking infrastructure). In Q1 2026, Turkey represented 50% of Kaspi Group's consolidated e-commerce GMV. Hepsiburada generated a KZT 93 billion net loss in FY2025, reflecting the investment phase. Management's 2026 target is EBITDA breakeven for the Turkey segment.

Role in the group: Marketplace is the primary growth engine and the unit attracting investor attention. Its combination of high take rate, accelerating advertising revenue, and the Turkey optionality makes it the segment most likely to drive above-group-average growth over the next three years.

Fintech

Kaspi's Fintech segment is a consumer bank with a behavioral data advantage no standalone bank can replicate. It offers: installment loans at point-of-sale (the primary product), personal unsecured loans, fixed-term deposits, savings products, and increasingly SME lending. Kaspi holds a full banking license and is the second-largest bank in Kazakhstan by total assets and retail deposits (22% deposit market share).

The defining capability is instant credit underwriting. Kaspi knows a customer's entire financial life - every payment made, every purchase on the marketplace, every peer-to-peer transfer - because the payment rails are proprietary. When a customer applies for a loan at checkout, Kaspi's model processes this behavioral history in seconds and returns a yes-or-no decision. The result is a cost-of-risk (loan losses as a percentage of the portfolio) of 0.7% in Q1 2026 - remarkably low for an emerging market consumer lender. This is not a coincidence; it reflects underwriting quality that other lenders structurally cannot match.

In FY2025, the average net loan portfolio grew 27-31% and Fintech net income grew 49% despite a challenging regulatory environment. In Q1 2026, the average loan portfolio grew 23% and revenue grew 25%. Total Fintech Volume (TFV) declined 2% in Q1 2026, reflecting a conscious shift toward longer-duration loans rather than high-volume short-term originations.

Fixed-term deposits were a standout product in 2025 - deposit amounts grew 207% and the number of customers grew 263% in Q2 2025. This reflects Kaspi aggressively competing with traditional banks for household savings, and winning. Higher deposit volumes reduce Kaspi's dependence on wholesale funding and lower its cost of capital.

Regulatory headwinds: Kazakhstan's National Bank raised reserve requirements, the government introduced a new 10% tax on government securities income (Q3 2025), and the bank tax was increased by 200 basis points for 2026. These headwinds are the primary reason adjusted EBITDA growth guidance for 2026 is only ~5% despite 20%+ GMV/TPV/TFV growth - the Kazakhstan government is effectively extracting rent from the most profitable and systemically important business in the country.

Role in the group: Fintech is the margin engine and the mechanism by which Kaspi's payment data advantage converts into lending economics. It provides the consumer credit that drives Marketplace conversion and average order values, and generates the bulk of the group's net income in cash terms.

Segment Summary Table

Section 3: Products and Business Detail

The Super App architecture is not a metaphor - it is literally two apps that serve as the interface for every Kaspi product. Kaspi.kz (consumer app) and Kaspi Pay (merchant app) are built on a common technology stack, share authentication and identity infrastructure, and link consumer demand directly to merchant supply. In Kazakhstan, there are approximately 15 million monthly active users of Kaspi.kz and 600,000+ merchants on Kaspi Pay. The engagement statistics are extraordinary - 77 transactions per consumer per month means the average Kazakhstani adult uses Kaspi more than twice per day.

Kaspi QR is the payment standard. Every merchant (from petrol stations to fashion boutiques to government agencies) has a Kaspi QR code on display. A consumer scans it, enters the amount, confirms with a fingerprint or PIN, and the transaction is complete in two seconds. The payment settles within Kaspi's proprietary ledger, avoiding external card network fees for domestic transactions. QR volume grew 128% in Q2 2025.

Kaspi Alaqan (Pay by Palm) launched in Almaty, Kazakhstan's largest city, in late 2025. The technology uses near-infrared light to capture the unique vein pattern in a customer's palm. Enrolled consumers can pay at participating merchant terminals by hovering their palm over a sensor - no phone, no card, no PIN. Within 90 days: 500,000 consumer registrations, 6,000 merchant locations, 10% transaction penetration in Almaty. National rollout is underway. Palm-pay technology exists at Amazon (Amazon One) and some Asian banks, but Kaspi's deployment at scale in a country where it controls the payment infrastructure is unique.

Kaspi e-Grocery operates a dark-store model across five+ major Kazakhstani cities. Dark stores are small warehouses (typically 500-2,000 square meters) positioned within urban neighborhoods, stocked with grocery items, and optimized for rapid picker-to-delivery workflows. Orders placed through the Kaspi app trigger picking and delivery, typically within the same day or next day. GMV grew 53% in FY2025. The business is capital-intensive (each dark store requires leasing, fitting, stocking, and staffing) but benefits from Kaspi's brand trust and the integrated payment and credit infrastructure.

Kaspi Online Marketplace covers electronics (historically the largest category, including the smartphone segment), fashion, home goods, toys, and sporting equipment. The smartphone category has been uniquely volatile: Kazakhstan introduced mandatory registration requirements for iPhones and high-end Android devices, causing a 17% GMV decline in Q2 2025 and a 24% decline in Q4 2025 before recovery. Ex-smartphones, marketplace growth has been steadier.

Kaspi Advertising allows merchants to purchase promotional placement within the Kaspi.kz consumer app and on third-party digital platforms. This is a nascent but fast-growing business. Revenue grew 56-67% across Q2 and Q3 2025. As the marketplace matures from growth phase (where merchants need no promotion because any listing sells) to a competitive phase (where merchant differentiation drives purchase decisions), advertising spend will grow naturally.

Kaspi Fixed-Term Deposits offer competitive interest rates to Kazakhstani consumers through the app with no branch visit required. In 2025, this product saw extraordinary growth - 207% in deposit amounts and 263% in customer count (Q2 2025). Kaspi is effectively capturing household savings that previously went to traditional banks by offering convenience and competitive rates through a trusted brand.

Kaspi Travel and Tickets - smaller verticals, but meaningful for engagement. Travel GMV expanded 16% in Q2 2025. These categories are important for daily engagement (consumers check flight prices, buy event tickets) even if they contribute smaller GMV.

Hepsiburada in Turkey operates an open marketplace of third-party sellers across electronics, fashion, home goods, and fast-moving consumer goods. Kaspi's integration investment is focused on: (a) improving delivery speed, with next-day coverage expanding from 47% to 63% by Q4 2025; (b) upgrading the mobile app to Kaspi's product standards with a focus on consumer engagement metrics; (c) building fintech capabilities, primarily through the Rabobank A.S. acquisition (expected close mid-2026), which will provide a full banking license for consumer credit products similar to Kaspi's Kazakhstan model.

Rabobank A.S. (Turkey) - This is a fully licensed deposit bank in Turkey that has neither a branch network nor existing customers. Kaspi is acquiring it as infrastructure: a banking license that will allow it to extend consumer credit on Hepsiburada purchases, replicate the Kazakhstan BNPL-at-checkout model, and build a deposit base in Turkey. The acquisition is pending regulatory approval and expected to close mid-2026.

Section 4: Customers

Kazakhstan consumers number approximately 15 million monthly active users in a country of 20 million people. This is saturation-level penetration of the adult smartphone-using population. For these users, Kaspi is not a choice between several options; it is the infrastructure of daily financial life. Switching costs are almost entirely behavioral and structural: a Kazakhstani consumer who switched away from Kaspi would lose instant credit access at checkout, would need to find an alternative that merchants also accept, and would lose years of financial history that Kaspi uses to personalize offers. There is no competitive alternative that offers this combination.

Merchant customers (600,000+) use Kaspi Pay as their primary payment terminal, their primary online sales channel, and their primary advertising platform. Merchants who list on Kaspi's marketplace gain access to 15 million active shoppers. The switching cost is existential - leaving means losing the primary sales channel for most small and medium merchants. Kaspi charges a take rate on each transaction (blended at ~12.7% of marketplace GMV in FY2025), which merchants pay because the volume and conversion from Kaspi's financing integration are unmatched. A merchant selling on OLX or Wildberries does not get BNPL approval in two seconds at checkout; on Kaspi, they do.

The buying decision inside merchant organizations: For small merchants (the majority), the owner makes every decision. For larger merchants, the e-commerce team and finance team drive the platform choice. Kaspi is typically the mandatory first channel (highest traffic, highest conversion) with other platforms secondary. There is no competitive sales cycle because Kaspi's dominance makes participation essentially obligatory.

Turkey consumers (Hepsiburada): A different profile - lower engagement intensity than Kazakhstan (Turkish e-commerce is more competitive), higher price sensitivity, and more comfortable switching between Hepsiburada, Trendyol, and Amazon Turkey. Kaspi is investing in delivery speed and product quality to build the engagement density that characterizes its Kazakhstan base. The fintech integration (when Rabobank A.S. closes) is expected to be the key differentiation lever.

Government and institutional: Kaspi processes utility bill payments, tax payments, and fines for Kazakhstan's government. These relationships are both high-volume (every Kazakhstani taxpayer uses Kaspi for government payments) and politically strategic (giving the government an interest in Kaspi's continued operation and reliability).

Section 5: Competitive Landscape

Kazakhstan's competitive dynamics are unusual because Kaspi has achieved something close to a structural monopoly on digital financial infrastructure while operating in a free-market economy. Understanding the competitive landscape requires analyzing each segment separately.

Payments in Kazakhstan: Kaspi processes ~85% of domestic cashless transactions. Halyk Bank is the closest competitor and processes a material share of card-based transactions, but Kaspi's QR standard has become dominant for consumer-to-merchant payments. The theoretical threat from the National Bank's Interbank Payment Service - a government-built alternative - was neutralized in 2024 when Kaspi opened its network to this standard, making them complementary rather than competitive. New entrants face the fundamental problem that 600,000 merchants already have Kaspi QR hardware and consumers already have Kaspi installed.

Marketplace in Kazakhstan: Four categories of competition. Cross-border Russian platforms (Wildberries, Ozon) hold roughly 20% of Kazakhstan e-commerce GMV against Kaspi's ~70%. They offer broad selection and sometimes lower prices. Their weakness: no integrated consumer credit. AliExpress from China competes on price for imported goods but faces longer delivery times and no financing. Local marketplace alternatives (Halyk Market, Jusan Market) are bank-backed attempts to replicate Kaspi, but without Kaspi's payment data advantage, their underwriting quality and instant approval rates lag significantly. Mechta.kz is a local electronics retailer with an online presence, primarily competing in the electronics category.

Kaspi's structural advantage in marketplace: the ability to approve a consumer loan in seconds at checkout converts consumers who would otherwise abandon purchases (or choose installment products from less capable competitors). This drives conversion rates and average order values that standalone e-commerce platforms cannot match.

Fintech in Kazakhstan: Halyk Bank (post-merger with Home Credit Kazakhstan) is the primary competitor with ~30% deposit market share and meaningful consumer lending. Forte Bank, Jusan Bank, and Freedom Bank are secondary players. None has Kaspi's behavioral data advantage. A bank that processes only its own customers' transactions has a fraction of the insight Kaspi has from processing the entire economy. This is why Kaspi's cost of risk at 0.7% is structurally lower.

Turkey (Hepsiburada): The most competitive landscape Kaspi has ever operated in. Trendyol - owned by Alibaba and operating since 2010 - is the clear market leader with significant scale in merchants, consumers, and logistics. Amazon Turkey (operating since 2018) is the global challenger. n11 (a Sabanci Group platform) is a legacy player losing share. Hepsiburada is the third-place platform by most measures. Kaspi's competitive bet is that its fintech integration (post-Rabobank) will meaningfully differentiate Hepsiburada from Trendyol and Amazon in the way that Kaspi's financing differentiates it in Kazakhstan. Trendyol has attempted fintech integration (TrendPay) but without a bank license, its capabilities are limited. If Kaspi can offer BNPL at checkout on Hepsiburada at the same instant-approval speed it uses in Kazakhstan, that is a genuine competitive differentiator in Turkey. Whether it's enough to displace Trendyol's scale advantage is the open question.

Barriers to entry (Kazakhstan): Near-absolute. Any new entrant would need: a banking license (capital-intensive, regulatory time-intensive), a payment acceptance network built to 600,000+ merchants (years of sales effort), proprietary payment rails (technology build taking years), consumer trust (built over 20 years), and the data flywheel that only comes from being the dominant payment processor. These barriers compound rather than stack sequentially - each one is harder to build because the others already exist.

Section 6: Industry

Kazakhstan's economic context: Kazakhstan is a resource-rich Central Asian nation of 20 million people, with GDP per capita of approximately $13,000. Oil revenues dominate the state budget and drive consumer income cycles. The economy is growing, urbanizing, and digitizing simultaneously - a favorable combination for Kaspi's business model. Kazakhstan's banking sector is modern by Central Asian standards (most payment infrastructure was built this decade), and consumer spending habits are shifting from cash and physical retail to digital channels.

Digital payments penetration: Non-cash payments reached 89% of all transactions in Kazakhstan in May 2024 - up from low single digits a decade ago. This is a staggering transformation, and Kaspi was the primary driver. The Digital Payments market is projected to reach $14.3 billion by 2028, growing at 9.7% annually. This is essentially the sustained growth rate of a market that hasn't yet reached saturation in terms of volume per user.

E-commerce growth: Kazakhstan's domestic e-commerce market grew sevenfold since 2020 to KZT 3.2 trillion (~$5.9 billion) in 2024, representing 14.1% of total retail trade. Projected CAGR of 22.3% through 2029 would bring the market to $24.7 billion. For context, Kaspi processes approximately 70% of this market by GMV.

Consumer lending: Kazakhstan's consumer credit market is growing but still underpenetrated relative to developed markets. Kaspi's loan portfolio grew 27-31% in FY2025. The National Bank's regulation is the primary constraint on growth pace - not market saturation.

Turkey e-commerce: Turkey's e-commerce market is substantially larger than Kazakhstan's ($20+ billion and growing). E-commerce penetration is growing from a lower base than Kazakhstan's current level, providing a longer growth runway. However, the Turkish lira's depreciation creates FX translation complexity and operational planning challenges for a company reporting in Kazakhstani tenge.

Industry structure - where Kaspi sits: Kaspi is a vertical integrator in a market where most global peers operate in silos. In the US, PayPal processes payments but doesn't lend at point-of-sale. Amazon runs a marketplace but relies on third-party credit cards for financing. Affirm provides BNPL but sits on someone else's marketplace. Kaspi does all three simultaneously, within one app, on proprietary rails. This integrated model is similar to what Alipay built in China and Grab is attempting in Southeast Asia - but Kaspi built it without a large tech company behind it, in a country of only 20 million people.

Cyclicality: Payments volume tracks household consumption and GDP growth - relatively stable and growing. E-commerce has a secular tailwind from offline-to-online shift that overrides cyclical noise. Consumer lending is the most cyclical element - in a recession, origination volumes would slow and credit losses would rise. Kazakhstan's economy is oilprice-linked, making commodity cycles the primary macro risk. The National Bank's response to oil-driven inflation (high interest rates) directly pressures Kaspi's Fintech margins.

Regulation: The National Bank of Kazakhstan (NBK) regulates banking and payments. The ARDFM (Agency for Regulation and Development of the Financial Market) governs fintech lending. Recent regulatory trend: progressively more demanding. Reserve requirements raised. Bank taxes raised. New taxes on government securities income introduced. This is unlikely to reverse in the medium term given Kaspi's visible profitability and market power. In Turkey, BDDK governs banking regulation and will govern the Rabobank A.S. subsidiary once the acquisition closes. Turkish banking regulation is sophisticated by emerging-market standards.

Section 7: Growth Triggers

(All sourced directly from management concall statements. Q1 2026 results were released today, May 11, 2026, with the concall held this morning.)

From Q1 2026 concall, May 11, 2026:

• Turkey is now 50% of consolidated e-commerce GMV. Management described the company as "becoming a larger, more diversified platform, with far greater growth potential than ever before" - flagging Turkey as a central growth driver that is only beginning to contribute. At 41% consolidated e-commerce GMV growth in Q1 2026, Turkey's acceleration is the primary catalyst.

• Consumer purchase frequency inflecting sharply. Purchases per consumer on the e-commerce platform grew from 10.4 per quarter (Q1 2025) to 15.0 per quarter (Q1 2026) - a 44% increase. Management cited this as a leading indicator of future GMV growth as higher-frequency consumers spend more per period.

• Advertising and delivery revenue growing 73% YoY. Management cited this as a structural revenue layer within the marketplace that is expanding faster than GMV, indicating take rate expansion and an improving mix.

• Full-year 2026 guidance reiterated without revision despite the Q1 results including net income down 1%. Management expressed confidence in cash generation and growth prospects for the remainder of the year. (Q1 2026 concall, May 11, 2026)

From Q4 2025 concall, March 2, 2026:

• Kaspi Alaqan national rollout. Management confirmed 500,000 consumer registrations and 6,000 merchant locations within 90 days of the Almaty launch. The next step is rolling out to additional Kazakhstani cities. CEO Mikheil Lomtadze noted: "77 monthly transactions per consumer" as a benchmark, and Alaqan is designed to capture the remaining cash and card transactions that QR hasn't yet displaced.

• E-commerce growing to 60% of total marketplace GMV in 2026 (vs 54% in FY2025). Management guided for this specific milestone, driven by faster product variety expansion and improving consumer frequency in higher-value categories. (Q4 2025 concall, March 2, 2026)

• Hepsiburada next-day shipping improvement ongoing. From 47% to 63% next-day coverage in FY2025 - management targeted continued improvement, citing this as the primary driver of consumer engagement improvement in Turkey. Each percentage point improvement in delivery speed correlates with higher repeat purchase rates. (Q4 2025 concall, March 2, 2026)

• Rabobank A.S. acquisition pending, expected close mid-2026. Once closed, this provides Kaspi with a full banking license in Turkey to deploy consumer lending on Hepsiburada - the core product that drives Kaspi's marketplace advantage in Kazakhstan. (Q4 2025 concall, March 2, 2026)

• Smartphone category recovery confirmed for January 2026. After a 24% GMV decline in Q4 2025 from iPhone registration requirements, management stated smartphone sales returned to growth in January 2026. This removes a significant drag that suppressed Q3 and Q4 2025 marketplace GMV. (Q4 2025 concall, March 2, 2026)

From Q3 2025 concall, November 10, 2025:

• $400 million ADS buyback program announced. Program commenced November 2025. This was the first significant buyback authorization in Kaspi's history as a public company. (Q3 2025 concall, Nov 10, 2025)

• E-grocery adding dark stores and expanding to additional Kazakhstani cities. Management described e-grocery (53% GMV growth in FY2025) as early-stage with significant geographic expansion ahead. City count was five at the time of the call, with more planned. (Q3 2025 concall, Nov 10, 2025)

• Advertising services expanding to third-party platforms. Beyond in-app advertising on Kaspi.kz, management described plans to extend merchant advertising capabilities to external platforms - a step toward building a performance advertising network similar to Amazon Advertising. (Q3 2025 concall, Nov 10, 2025)

From Q2 2025 concall, August 4, 2025:

• Restaurant vertical identified as ~$1 billion opportunity. CEO Lomtadze explicitly named restaurants as a market Kaspi is beginning to address - a new category that would bring food-service GMV onto the platform and increase daily engagement frequency. (Q2 2025 concall, Aug 4, 2025)

• Clothing and fashion underpenetrated, significant growth potential. Management cited fashion as a vertically underdeveloped category within the Kazakhstan marketplace where Kaspi's share of the total market is lower than in electronics. Expansion here would contribute to GMV growth without requiring new customer acquisition. (Q2 2025 concall, Aug 4, 2025)

• Fixed-term deposit product rapidly scaling. 207% deposit amount growth and 263% customer count growth in Q2 2025 - management flagged this as a product that was "early-stage" with continued expansion expected. Higher deposits reduce Kaspi's wholesale funding costs. (Q2 2025 concall, Aug 4, 2025)

Trigger summary table:

Section 8: Key Risks

1. Regulatory tightening in Kazakhstan - high probability, moderate impact per event, cumulative erosion risk

Kazakhstan's government has been methodically increasing its take from Kaspi's profitability. The mechanism: as Kaspi becomes more systemically important and visibly profitable, the National Bank and Ministry of Finance have more leverage to impose reserve requirements, bank taxes, and new levies. FY2025 brought a 10% tax on government securities income (reducing net income by 1% in Q3 2025 alone), increased reserve requirements, and a 200 basis point bank tax hike effective 2026. The company's 2026 adjusted EBITDA guidance of only ~5% growth despite 20%+ volume growth is almost entirely explained by regulatory headwinds. If Kazakhstan continues on this trajectory - and there is no structural reason it would stop - each year compresses the translation from top-line growth to bottom-line growth. The practical concern is not a one-time event; it is the accumulation of incrementally more demanding regulation from an authority that has no competitive alternative to Kaspi and therefore can extract without losing system stability.

2. Turkey execution risk - medium probability, high impact

Kaspi is investing approximately $1.127 billion in Hepsiburada plus an additional $100 million injection in December 2025, plus the Rabobank A.S. acquisition price, into a market where it has no operational history, no payment network dominance, and faces a better-funded incumbent (Trendyol/Alibaba). The mechanism through which this becomes a problem: Trendyol responds to Kaspi's delivery investment with its own improvements, preventing Kaspi from gaining a delivery quality edge; Turkish regulatory approval for Rabobank A.S. is delayed past mid-2026, postponing the fintech integration that is central to Kaspi's differentiation thesis; and ongoing Turkish lira weakness creates currency translation losses that further depress the consolidated P&L. The FY2025 Turkey net loss of KZT 93 billion is manageable against Kaspi's overall profitability, but the direction of travel matters. If Turkey losses grow rather than stabilize, market confidence in the investment thesis erodes.

3. Smartphone GMV concentration - medium probability, moderate but recurring impact

Smartphones have historically represented 20%+ of Kaspi's marketplace GMV. This single category is unusually volatile because: regulatory changes (like Kazakhstan's mandatory iPhone registration requirement) can suppress supply, and smartphones are frequently bought on credit, making them doubly sensitive to both supply restrictions and consumer credit availability. In Q2 2025, smartphones fell 17%. In Q4 2025, they fell 24%. Each occurrence suppresses total GMV metrics, confuses investors about underlying growth, and creates quarter-on-quarter volatility in Fintech volumes (fewer smartphone loans means lower TFV). This is not a business model problem, but it creates earnings visibility challenges.

4. High interest rates in Kazakhstan - medium probability, ongoing drag

Kaspi's 2026 guidance explicitly "assumes no interest-rate cuts" in Kazakhstan. The National Bank base rate has been elevated to contain inflation. This creates two simultaneous pressures on Fintech: higher funding costs for Kaspi Bank's lending activities (cost of deposits and borrowed funds rises) and compressed net interest margins. If rates stay high for longer than expected, the Fintech segment's 25% revenue growth won't fully translate to net income growth. Management is aware and has guided conservatively on EBITDA for this reason, but a longer-than-expected rate plateau is the primary downside scenario for Fintech profitability.

5. Russian e-commerce platform competition - medium probability, moderate impact

Wildberries (estimated 20% of Kazakhstan e-commerce GMV) and Ozon have meaningful and growing presences in Kazakhstan. Both benefit from large product catalogs assembled for the Russian market, competitive pricing, and increasing local logistics presence. The risk: if either platform builds a consumer financing capability (working with a Kazakhstani bank partner) that approaches Kaspi's instant BNPL, the key competitive differentiator erodes. Kaspi's take rate of 12.7% is sustainable only as long as the financing integration justifies it. Neither Wildberries nor Ozon has yet repliciated this - but it is not impossible.

6. Concentration / political risk - low probability, catastrophic impact

Kaspi processes the majority of Kazakhstan's domestic financial transactions, holds the second-largest deposit base in the country, and is the dominant payment rail. This makes it systemically important and politically visible. In resource-rich authoritarian-leaning economies, private companies that achieve this kind of infrastructure dominance occasionally face nationalization, forced ownership changes, or regulatory coercion outside the normal banking supervision framework. This is a tail risk, not a base case, but it is categorically different from the regulatory tightening risk described above (which is incremental and precedented) in that a more extreme political intervention would be value-destructive in a way that cannot be managed through product improvements or geographic diversification.

Section 9: Walk the Talk

Concall dates used: Q2 2025 (August 4, 2025), Q3 2025 (November 10, 2025), Q4 2025 (March 2, 2026), Q1 2026 (May 11, 2026).

Starting with the Q2 2025 call in August. Management guided for continued strong e-grocery growth, flagged smartphone headwinds from Kazakhstan's new iPhone registration requirements as a drag on the quarter and expected to persist, and announced that Pay by Palm technology was in development targeting a "year-end" rollout. CEO Lomtadze identified the restaurant category as a new frontier, estimated at approximately "$1 billion" in market opportunity. Management's tone was confident on underlying business momentum despite the iPhone headwind, which they characterized as supply-constrained rather than demand-constrained.

By the Q3 2025 call in November, the picture was mixed against the Q2 commitments. E-grocery grew 53% as promised - fully delivered. Pay by Palm was confirmed rolling out "by year-end" - on track. But smartphone headwinds were worse than Q2 guidance implied: marketplace GMV growth moderated to 12%, and management explicitly flagged that Q4 2025 would face continued smartphone disruption. The $400 million buyback was announced in this call - a credibility signal, as it followed through on earlier language about shareholder returns. The management team was direct about the smartphone situation and its Q4 implications: they didn't hide the drag or attribute it to macroeconomic conditions; they named the cause (iPhone registration requirements) and sized the impact.

David Ferguson (Managing Director, Q3 2025): "[Smartphone supply constraints] impacted marketplace performance by approximately 8% GMV and approximately 3% consolidated income."

This level of specificity is notable. Management attributed a quantified headwind to a specific cause rather than burying it in aggregate numbers.

By Q4 2025, Kaspi had delivered Kaspi Alaqan on schedule (confirmed by the 500K registrations/6K merchants data point), and Fintech net income grew 49% - stronger than the regulatory environment would have implied. But smartphone GMV fell 24% in Q4 - worse than the Q3 warning suggested. Management's partial offset was the January 2026 recovery signal, which proved to be accurate given Q1 2026 Marketplace GMV grew 19%. The 2026 guidance set at this call - 20% GMV/TPV/TFV growth, 5% adjusted EBITDA growth - was set conservatively relative to the Q1 2026 results (31% revenue growth, 41% e-commerce GMV growth).

The Q1 2026 results (released today) reiterate 2026 guidance unchanged. Net income fell 1%, which is softer than 31% revenue growth implies, reflecting Turkey investment and Fintech regulatory headwinds that management had warned about. Management's decision to reiterate guidance rather than revise it upward despite strong Q1 revenue is consistent with a pattern of conservative guidance-setting.

Overall credibility assessment: Kaspi's management does what it says on operational execution - Pay by Palm delivered on time, e-grocery growth delivered on guidance, Hepsiburada metrics improving as claimed. Where they have missed or underestimated: the depth of the smartphone category disruption (flagged late, worse than implied), and the quantum of Turkey losses in FY2025 (a KZT 93 billion net loss is material even against a profitable group). On financial guidance, the management is consistently conservative on the headline metric (EBITDA) while top-line (GMV/TPV) tends to track or beat. This is not overpromising management - if anything, it is a team that sets achievable targets and then delivers, sometimes exceeding them operationally. The one area of frustration is the Turkey disclosure cadence: investors got headline numbers, but the mechanics of Hepsiburada's loss trajectory were not fully telegraphed before they materialized.

Section 10: Shareholder Friendliness Index

Kaspi has been a committed and growing dividend payer since its 2020 London IPO. Annual dividends per ADS were approximately $2.32 in 2022 (two payments, reflecting a partial year of quarterly cadence), jumped to approximately $6.44 in 2023 (four quarterly payments, reflecting the first full year of quarterly distributions), and grew again to approximately $7.27 in 2024. By 2025 and into 2026, the quarterly dividend was set at KZT 850 per ADS (~$1.76-1.88 per ADS at prevailing exchange rates), with management stating in the Q4 2025 concall that this level is "sustainable for the current year." The Q1 2026 dividend of KZT 850/ADS represented a 64% payout ratio. The growth trajectory from 2022 to 2024 reflects both the maturation of the business and management's commitment to returning capital rather than hoarding it on the balance sheet.

On buybacks, Kaspi authorized a $400 million ADS buyback program in Q3 2025, which commenced in November 2025. However, actual repurchase activity appears to have been limited relative to the authorization - the reported buyback yield is approximately -0.25%, suggesting dilution from options and restricted share vesting is roughly offsetting repurchase activity. The primary capital return vehicle is and has been dividends. The company settled $600 million in 5.900% five-year notes post-Q1 2026 to strengthen liquidity for ongoing Turkey investments, which represents a deliberate choice to fund international expansion with debt rather than equity dilution.

Verdict: Returns Capital. Kaspi is a committed dividend grower with a 64% payout ratio and a track record of consistent quarterly distributions. The buyback authorization is large but execution has been modest, and management's priority is sustaining dividends through the Turkey investment cycle.

Section 11: Insider Activities

Source: SEC Form 4 filings (KSPI is listed on NASDAQ; Form 4 is the applicable disclosure). All transactions by the sole disclosed insider transactor in the trailing 12 months.

The only insider with Form 4 activity over the past 12 months is Vyacheslav Kim, Co-Founder and Director, who directly holds approximately 38.93 million ADS following recent transactions - a controlling stake representing the overwhelming majority of his net worth.

Recent transactions (most recent first):

Reading the signals:

The sales are all executed under a pre-established Rule 10b5-1 trading plan - a systematic mechanism that allows insiders to pre-schedule transactions months in advance, insulating them from insider trading allegations. For a founder holding 38+ million shares, systematically selling 179,000 shares over six weeks (~0.5% of holdings) is entirely consistent with routine estate management and diversification planning rather than a view on the company's prospects.

The March 2026 purchases (~33,000 ADS at ~$75-76 per ADS) within the same 10b5-1 framework are somewhat unusual - most 10b5-1 plans are sale-only. This could represent a separate buy tranche within a complex plan or a distinct plan filed to buy at a price target. At $2.5 million in open-market purchases, the signal is modest in absolute dollar terms relative to Kim's holdings, but the directionality is notable.

The net position over the six-week window: approximately 146,000 net shares sold across all transactions. Kim's remaining stake of ~38.93 million ADS is unchanged in character - he remains the largest individual shareholder and is overwhelmingly aligned with the business's long-term outcome.

There are no disclosed Form 4 transactions from CEO Mikheil Lomtadze in the available search results for this period. As a foreign private issuer, Kaspi benefits from exemptions under Sections 16(b) and 16(c) of the Exchange Act, which may limit some forms of disclosure.

Net assessment: Neutral signal. Kim's sales are consistent with a 10b5-1 diversification plan from a founder who holds the overwhelming majority of his wealth in a single stock. The modest purchases in March 2026 provide a mild positive counterpoint but are too small relative to total holdings to read as a strong conviction signal. Nothing in the insider transaction record suggests concern about business fundamentals.

Section 12: Scenarios

Bull Case

Everything Kaspi has built in Kazakhstan was the product of two decades of compounding: a payment standard that everyone adopted, a lending database that no one else has, a consumer brand with 15 million users who open the app 2+ times per day. The bull case is that Turkey becomes Kazakhstan.

In this scenario, Rabobank A.S. closes on schedule in mid-2026, and Kaspi deploys BNPL at Hepsiburada checkout within 12 months of closing. Turkish consumers, accustomed to clunky installment plans from legacy banks, discover that Kaspi approves loans in seconds at the exact moment of purchase decision. Conversion rates on Hepsiburada improve materially. Average order values rise. Merchant take rates expand. Hepsiburada moves from EBITDA breakeven in 2026 to meaningful profitability in 2027, then begins compounding. Simultaneously, Kazakhstan's interest rates fall modestly from their elevated level, expanding Fintech margins. E-grocery reaches profitability as the dark-store network achieves density. Advertising becomes a $500M+ annual revenue line as merchants compete for Kaspi's consumer attention. Kaspi Alaqan expands to Turkey. The company announces its next geographic expansion - Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan - using the Hepsiburada playbook.

By 2028, investors recognize that the business is not a Kazakhstani niche platform but a replicable super-app operating model with a second proving ground in Turkey and two more on the horizon.

Base Case

Kazakhstan grows at mid-teen rates. E-commerce reaches 60% of marketplace GMV by end-2026 as management guided. Advertising continues growing at 50%+ annually and becomes a material earnings contributor by 2027. E-grocery expands to additional cities and begins approaching break-even economics by 2027.

Turkey remains at or near EBITDA breakeven in 2026. Rabobank A.S. closes in mid-2026, and Kaspi begins building the fintech integration through 2027, with meaningful consumer credit on Hepsiburada launches in 2027. Turkey doesn't become a profit center by 2027, but the losses narrow and the growth trajectory is positive. Hepsiburada engaged consumer count continues growing.

Kazakhstan regulation continues tightening incrementally - another regulatory levy or reserve requirement change in 2026 or 2027 - but Kaspi manages it by growing volume faster than per-unit margins compress. Dividends are maintained at KZT 850/quarter throughout. Smartphone category normalizes and stops being a meaningful source of GMV volatility. The $400 million buyback is executed partially over 18-24 months.

Group consolidated growth comes in at or near the 20% GMV/TPV/TFV guidance for FY2026, with adjusted EBITDA growing slightly above the 5% guided rate.

Bear Case

Turkey deteriorates faster and costs more than management anticipated. Trendyol responds to Kaspi's delivery investments with its own improvements, neutralizing Kaspi's quality edge. The Turkish lira falls further, amplifying net losses when translated to tenge. Turkish regulatory approval for Rabobank A.S. is delayed past mid-2026, then again - the fintech integration thesis is pushed out by 18+ months, leaving Hepsiburada competing on delivery and selection alone against a better-funded incumbent. Turkey losses grow from KZT 93 billion in FY2025 to materially larger in FY2026 and FY2027.

Simultaneously, Kazakhstan's regulatory escalation accelerates. A new banking sector law introduces a digital services tax or a windfall profit levy. The National Bank requires Kaspi to open its payment rails to competitors under open banking regulation - diluting the proprietary advantage. Fintech loan growth slows to single digits as rising reserve requirements constrain lending capacity.

Smartphone GMV disruptions recur (new regulatory or supply chain reasons). E-grocery proves structurally loss-making as dark store economics don't improve despite geographic expansion. The dividend, technically manageable on Kazakhstan earnings alone, is cut when Turkey losses exceed projections.

The company is still operating and profitable - Kaspi's Kazakhstan franchises are not existentially threatened in this scenario - but the international expansion thesis is impaired, and the growth multiple assigned to the stock contracts as the "Kazakhstan super-app" story fails to become the "regional digital empire" story.

Sources:

• Kaspi.kz Q4 2025 Earnings Call Transcript - The Motley Fool
• Kaspi.kz 1Q 2026 Financial Results - StockTitan
• Kaspi.kz Q3 2025 Earnings Call Highlights - GuruFocus
• Kaspi.kz Q2 2025 Earnings Call Highlights - Yahoo Finance
• Kaspi.kz Files Annual Report on Form 20-F - GlobeNewsWire
• Kaspi.kz Completes Acquisition of Hepsiburada - GlobeNewsWire
• KSPI Form 4 Insider Trading - StockTitan
• Kaspi.kz Investor Relations
• Kazakhstan E-Commerce Market Expands Sevenfold - Astana Times
• Kaspi.kz expects to close Rabobank A.S. acquisition in mid-2026 - Yahoo Finance
• KSPI Dividend History - StockAnalysis
• Digital Payments - Kazakhstan Market Forecast - Statista