Kaspi.kz Brand Guidelines: From Bank Caspian to Kazakhstan’s Super App

A bank renamed three times before it became an app.

The bank at the centre of Kaspi.kz is older than its name. Russian Wikipedia says it opened in Almaty on 1 January 1991 as Al Baraka Kazakhstan, an international commercial bank set up as a Kazakh–Saudi venture. After a new banking law took effect in April 1993 it became a joint-stock bank, and in January 1997, when the law required banks to re-register, it was renamed Bank Caspian (Банк Каспийский). In April 1997 it merged with Kazdorbank, and in August 2003 it re-registered again as a joint-stock company under a new corporate law.

The people now named as its founders arrived later. English Wikipedia says Vyacheslav Kim founded Kaspi after buying the privatised Caspian Bank in 2002; the investment firm Baring Vostok took a stake in 2006; and Mikheil Lomtadze joined the management team in 2007. Kaspi’s own press releases now describe Lomtadze as the company’s chief executive and co-founder.

The brand itself dates from 15 November 2008, when, according to both English and Russian Wikipedia, Bank Caspian was renamed Kaspi Bank. The holding structure followed: English Wikipedia says the National Bank of Kazakhstan authorised the joint-stock company Kaspi to become the bank’s holding company in September 2015, and that on 2 April 2018 that company was renamed Kaspi.kz, taking the name of its website and app. Russian Wikipedia lists the group as four businesses — Kaspi Shop, Kaspi Bank, Kaspi Pay and Kaspi Travel — and its head office is in Almaty.

Payments, marketplace and fintech in one app.

Kaspi.kz describes its business as three platforms — Payments, Marketplace and Fintech — joined in one app. Its investor-relations site sets out the order in which the pieces arrived: bill payments and an e-wallet in 2012; the marketplace platform, the Kaspi Bonus programme and online consumer finance in 2014; the Kaspi Gold debit card in 2015; the Kaspi Red shopping club in 2016; the Kaspi mobile app, transfers by phone number and the Kaspi Juma sale in 2017; the Kaspi Business app and transfers by QR code in 2018; and in-store payments through the app with QR terminals in 2019.

The company calls the result its Super App, “a single window” into all its services. The same page lists bill payments, the marketplace, consumer finance, person-to-person transfers, Kaspi QR payments in shops, a personal-finance tool called My Bank, the Kaspi Red club, bonuses, Kaspi Maps and Kaspi Message, which sends payment reminders and confirmations inside the app. Transfers can go by card number, phone number or Kaspi QR, and to Visa or Mastercard cards at home or abroad, the company says.

Russian Wikipedia adds later services. It says the first Kaspi Juma sale was held on 17 November 2017; that in July 2020 Kaspi patented its method of issuing payment cards through the app and a card kiosk, the Kaspi Kartomat; that Kaspi Kassa, a combined cash register and payment terminal for small businesses, followed in 2023; that the palm-payment system Alaqan launched in October 2025; and that in July 2026 Lomtadze presented Kasper, an AI shopping assistant built into the app. Government services, from vehicle re-registration in 2021 to residence registration in 2023, were added in work with Kazakh ministries, the same article says.

Super-apps, scripts and savings books.

Many banks in Central Asia and the Caucasus now present themselves through their apps. In Kazakhstan, Kaspi.kz describes a single “Super App” that joins bill payments, an online marketplace, consumer credit, transfers and QR payments in shops, while Halyk Bank, the former state savings bank, sells its retail services through the Halyk SuperApp and its business services through Onlinebank. In the apps these two banks describe, loans, deposits, cards and transfers sit beside shopping, travel and government services.

Names are usually shown in more than one language and script. Halyk Bank’s full name appears in Kazakh as Қазақстан Халық Банкі, in Russian as Народный банк Казахстана and in English as Halyk Bank of Kazakhstan; Kaspi Bank was registered for years under the Russian name Банк Каспийский before it took its Latin-letter brand in 2008. Across the region, Kazakh, Uzbek, Georgian, Armenian and Azerbaijani names may appear beside Latin and Cyrillic forms, so a wordmark has to work in several alphabets at once.

Many of these banks now operate across borders. Halyk Group runs subsidiaries in Georgia and Uzbekistan, and Kaspi.kz has bought classified-advert sites in Azerbaijan and businesses in Turkey. Halyk’s website lists loans, deposits, cards and transfers, and both groups, as listed companies, publish investor-relations sections with financial results for shareholders.

Colour and type vary from bank to bank. The palettes in this series of guides — reds, greens, blues and teals among them — are our own unofficial interpretations, set beside a Google Fonts stand-in for each brand. This guide sets out what can be checked about each bank — when it was founded, how its name changed, who owns it and how it presents its services — and keeps figures such as customer numbers to a minimum, attributed to the source and date that gave them.

London, Nasdaq, Baku and Istanbul.

Kaspi.kz became a listed company in two steps. English Wikipedia says it sold global depositary receipts in London in October 2020, then applied on 19 October 2023 to list American depositary shares on Nasdaq in New York and sold shares there on 19 January 2024. The Istanbul newspaper Hürriyet Daily News confirmed in March 2025 that Kaspi had been listed on Nasdaq since January 2024.

It has also expanded outside Kazakhstan. In September 2019, English Wikipedia says, it entered Azerbaijan by buying the classified-advert sites Turbo.az for cars, Bina.az for property and Tap.az for goods and services. In August 2020 it bought the ticketing company Santufei, which became Kaspi Travel.

Turkey followed. In October 2024 Kaspi signed a binding agreement to buy 65.4% of the Turkish online retailer Hepsiburada, the Turkish news site Haberler reported at the time, and Hürriyet Daily News described Kaspi in March 2025 as Hepsiburada’s controlling shareholder; in December 2025 the Turkish technology site LOG reported that Kaspi had completed a capital increase at Hepsiburada. On 27 March 2025 Kaspi agreed to buy Rabobank A.Ş., Rabobank’s Turkish subsidiary, which Hürriyet Daily News said had no deposit or borrowing customers and no branch network. Turkey’s banking regulator approved the purchase in June 2026, Kaspi announced, and Interfax-Kazakhstan reported on 15 July 2026 that the acquisition had been completed.

For a design guide, Kaspi.kz shows how a bank can rename itself after its app and let one interface carry payments, shopping and credit. Compare Halyk Bank, the Almaty savings bank now selling its own SuperApp, and Visa, one of the card networks Kaspi transfers reach. For this guide we use a signal red, a brick red and a charcoal with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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