Have they shown you Kaspi.kz yet?

At first glance kaspi.kz website seen in a laptop browser does not look attractive. With the greatest favor one could call it “minimalistic”. More critical viewers would say it is too simple to be liked. Haters simply say it is ugly. The most intriguing part visual is, at least for Western Iternet users, the Cyrillic script the website uses. Its exotic characters don’t help in understanding how the page works and where on is supposed to click. Shortly: not inviting website at all. But, honestly, it doesn’t matter at all because Kaspi.kz is meant to work as an app, on smartphones. The brand statement says “суперприложение № 1 в Казахстане” (English “super app No 1 in Kazakhstan). To say whether Kaspi’s UX is good and value proposition viable we need to assess the app, not the website. This post is, however, not about the product and its functionality but about the apparent popularity of Kaspi.kz among strategist of banking industry. The inspiration for writing this text were numerous meetings and presentations of various consulting companies I attended while working in different roles in retail bank. During those meetings there were slides shown about the super app from Kazakhstan; often on these slides we saw the main page of the Kaspi.kz website. I’m pretty sure many digital banking experts share that kind of experience with me. Recently, a week or two ago, I was again exposed to the same case which made me finally write about the phenomenon of ever-present Kaspi in the strategic slide decks of major consultancy practices.

The bank from “unknown” country

Kaspi as a brand was born in 2011 as he result of Kazakhstan’s Caspian Bank’s rebranding. Kazakhstan is, so to speak, quite exotic market from banking perspective and hardly present in the mainstream narrative of digital banking, fintech, and innovation. I’m writing it, of course, from Western (or at least heavily westernized) perspective. For sure for Central Asia experts Kazakhstan is an important market and its banks are well-known players on economical stage of the region. Still, Central Asia is not the favorite geography for those who looks for the most innovative advancements and disruptive project in financial sector. Specifically Kazakhstan is still best remember as the home country of the fictional character of Borat Sagdiyev, the reporter who came to visit US and A with his pet chicken to make a documentary about America and that way “Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan”. Putting comedy movies aside, let me say that, in common opinion, there are countries much more expected to bring novelty to banking industry than Kazakhstan. More than two years ago I wrote the post dedicated to the favorite places for fintech start-ups and pointed to the significant role of UK, India and Singapore, the countries actually more recognized by banking community for their innovative projects than other. If we add to the list USA and China we will see the empty space in the place where Kazakhstan and some other countries are. From this perspective, it is even more surprising that Kaspi is often used as an example of successful banking innovation. It is a strong proof that there is something valuable to learn from the case.

Beyond banking with a mobile platform

One of the reason for the importance of Kaspi.kz case is its nature. Kaspi is a successful, multidimensional, mobile-first platform which emerged from banking services but currently encompasses numerous product and services and targets whole spectrum of consumer needs. It is hard to find anything similarly successful in regions more familiar to Westerners. On the other hand the concept of platformization is very popular and appealing to banking community. Platforms, especially digital ones powered by apps, are in the centre of banking strategies. I found the trend significant and influencing the current thinking about digital banking so I made it a featured subject for the second half of 2024 on my blog. One of the major motifs of banking platformization is its ability to re-shape legacy business models of banks. A digital platform as a tool to amend core banking services with non-banking products (popular “going beyond banking” approach) is often recommended as a strategic option for those players, who wants to scale-up faster, create new revenue streams or tap on the alternative customer segments, especially unbanked. Kaspi has created such platform, the ecosystem some banks are still desperately search for, and therefore it is a perfect case to support “beyond banking” strategies. Interestingly, since Kaspi’s launch we haven’t seen more meaningful examples of similar strategy, while Kaspi itself continues to build their platform and remains the example of successful innovation. Hence, my fellow digital banker, do not be surprised, when you see the slides about Kaspi on your next strategic meeting. Consultants simply don’t have much more to show you regarding beyond banking digital ecosystems apart from the platform built by bank from Kazakhstan.