Kazakhstan: Veon Plans Digital Bank by End-2027 After Closing US$81 Million OLX Deal
Veon, the telecoms group that owns Kazakhstan’s Beeline mobile network, says it wants to launch a digital bank in the country by the end of 2027. The plan was announced as Beeline Kazakhstan completed a US$81 million deal for OLX KZ, one of the country’s biggest online classifieds platforms, giving Veon a large shopping audience to sell financial products to.
Key facts
- Deal closed: Beeline Kazakhstan, majority-owned by Veon, completed its purchase of 100% of OLX KZ from OLX Global for a total of US$81 million, including about US$6 million of completion adjustments.
- Bank plan: Veon chief executive Kaan Terzioglu said the group intends to introduce a digital bank in Kazakhstan by the end of next year, according to Bloomberg and Briefs Finance.
- Audience: OLX KZ has about 9 million monthly active users and reaches more than 52% of Kazakhstan’s active internet population. Beeline Kazakhstan has 11.8 million mobile customers.
- Regulator link: In September, Veon and Beeline Kazakhstan signed a five-year memorandum with the National Bank of Kazakhstan to study digital payment services and links to national payment infrastructure.
From phone network to bank
Veon calls itself a “digital operator”: instead of only selling mobile data, it builds apps for payments, shopping, entertainment and finance on top of its network. Digital services made up 27.2% of group revenue in the third quarter of 2026, and the company says it has around 228 million digital customers across its five markets.
Kazakhstan is Veon’s third-largest market by revenue. Its local unit already runs a wider ecosystem of about 60 internal and external products. OLX KZ adds a marketplace where millions of people buy and sell cars, flats, electronics and services each month, which is exactly the kind of everyday activity where payments, instalment loans and savings products can be offered inside the same app.
Reports say Veon plans to upgrade its licences so it can take deposits. That step matters: in Kazakhstan, banks are licensed and supervised by the Agency for Regulation and Development of the Financial Market (ARDFM), while the National Bank of Kazakhstan, the central bank, oversees payment systems. The September memorandum does not by itself allow Beeline to offer new financial services; the company has said it will seek status as a first-category payment organisation, subject to approval.
Why it matters
Kazakhstan has one of the most digital retail finance markets in Central Asia, dominated by Kaspi.kz, a “super app” that combines payments, a marketplace and lending. Kaspi has long shown how a shopping platform and a bank can feed each other, and Terzioglu has made clear that Veon wants a top position in financial services. Briefs Finance quoted him saying, “I would like to be number one or number two in financial services.”
A credible new challenger could mean more competition on fees, savings rates and credit for consumers in the tenge, Kazakhstan’s currency, and for the small sellers who list on OLX. The risk for Veon is the size of the gap: winning deposits and lending safely takes time, capital and regulatory trust, and a deposit-taking licence is not yet in hand.
The move also fits a regional pattern of telecoms groups turning into financial players. Veon has just launched the Mukto Pay payments platform through its Banglalink network in Bangladesh, and mobile operators across Asia are using their large customer bases to move into wallets and lending.
What to watch
- Whether ARDFM grants Veon a banking or deposit-taking licence, and on what timeline.
- How quickly payments and credit appear inside the OLX KZ and Beeline apps.
- How Kaspi.kz and the country’s established banks respond on pricing for consumers and sellers.
Related on FinDeskAsia: Bangladesh: Banglalink launches Mukto Pay and Kyrgyzstan’s new Elpay QR and phone-number transfers.
Sources: VEON via GlobeNewswire (Nov 2026), Briefs Finance (Nov 2026), Bloomberg (Nov 2026), Developing Telecoms (Sep 2026).
