🇰🇿Kazakhstan Banks for Non-⁠Residents: Kaspi Gold, Halyk, BCC, Forte

To a non-resident the Kazakh retail market looks like six near-identical shopfronts, but the choice comes down to three questions: what the bank demands at the door, what it gives once you are inside, and what happens to the card after a year. The regulatory frame is the same everywhere and it is strict; the differences begin where a bank decides which document counts as a sufficient basis of stay.

Concept

Retail banking in Kazakhstan works as one shared frame plus a few private extensions. The regulator and the banks set the shared part: a card for a foreigner without a residence permit runs for one year, the account has no expiry, cards are issued in person and every bank asks for the IIN. The differences reduce to three axes: which basis of stay the bank accepts, which currencies its transfers reach, and at what balance a relationship manager appears.

The practical consequence: you do not pick the "best" bank, you pick for the job. A first card, a currency channel and premium service almost never coexist in one Kazakh bank — a working relocator setup is two accounts, not one. The same two-accounts-in-different-groups principle applies at the other typical landing point of relocation — Serbian banks, where the fork runs along bank ownership: an EU group subsidiary, the state-owned segment or local capital.

The shared regulatory frame

ARDFM Board Resolution No. 96 of 31 December 2024 (Adilet) amended the banks' AML requirements: payment cards issued to non-residents of Kazakhstan were capped at 12 calendar months, with business entities, diplomatic staff and investors carved out, and holding more than five cards of one bank became a high-risk marker. Banks applied the rules from 20 January 2025; cards issued to foreigners without a residence permit before that date kept their term (BCC). The requirements were restated by Resolution No. 74 of 20 April 2026: in the current text (paragraph 27 of the ARDFM Requirements approved by Resolution No. 18) non-residents whom the bank rates as high ML/TF risk or exposed to fraud get no remote or proxy onboarding or card issuance, no more than one payment card, a debit card valid for no more than 12 calendar months and a monthly biometric re-confirmation (Adilet).

The cap applies to the card, not the account. Kaspi lists what still works on an expired Kaspi Gold — transfers in the app, credits to the account number, in-app payments, withdrawals at Kaspi ATMs by IIN — but tells a non-resident whose card was issued or reissued from 19 January 2025 that it must be reissued in a branch to keep using the card and Kaspi services (Kaspi Guide). Reissue requires a personal visit.

The second shared layer is identification. The IIN comes first: BCC opens a current account on one identity document that carries the IIN, and Kaspi asks for the IIN as an original, a copy or the SMS from 1414. Cards are issued in person — BCC states that cards are opened only with the client present and may not be collected under a power of attorney (BCC). The one durable way out of this logic is a residence permit: with it, service moves to resident terms across the market.

The third layer is sanctions. EU law prohibits any transaction, direct or indirect, with the Russian banks listed in Annex XIV to Council Regulation (EU) No 833/2014 — among them Sberbank, VTB, Sovcombank, Promsvyazbank and Rosselkhozbank (Article 5h); a Kazakh bank is not bound by that regulation, but no leg of a payment with those banks can run through an EU institution. How banks examine the origin of incoming money is set out in source of funds. Russian citizens themselves are served: Kaspi opens Kaspi Gold for citizens of any country (Kaspi Guide). What differs is transparency: in its guide for Kaspi Pay business accounts Kaspi publishes a list of Russian and Belarusian banks to which transfers are impossible because of sanctions, the banks with which its currency operations are restricted (Kaspi Guide); the list also names a few banks outside the two countries, among them the Indian branches of Sberbank and VTB, and it says nothing about incoming transfers from the listed banks. The logic of the restrictions is mapped in the sanctions map.

The fourth shared layer is the deposit guarantee, and it is the same at every bank in the table. The Kazakhstan Deposit Insurance Fund (KDIF) pays up to KZT 20 million on tenge savings deposits, KZT 10 million on other tenge deposits, cards and current accounts, and KZT 5 million on deposits in foreign currency, with an overall ceiling of KZT 20 million per depositor per bank. Cover reaches individuals and individual entrepreneurs, while deposits of legal entities, metal accounts, safe-deposit contents, deposit certificates and deposits at Islamic banks fall outside it. Two consequences for a non-resident: the currency sub-limit is four times lower than the tenge one, so a dollar balance held for safety is the least protected part of the arrangement, and a balance above KZT 20 million belongs at a second bank rather than in a larger deposit at the first. The comparison with other shelves sits in personal accounts abroad.

Automatic exchange is a line of its own. Citizens of Russia, Turkey, China and other participating jurisdictions are additionally asked for the tax number of their country of residence (TIN) and a residential address. Kaspi's own rules label this group "OECD countries" — an inaccurate phrase, since neither Russia nor China belongs to the OECD: the perimeter here is CRS, not membership of the organisation. No practical relief follows from the slip — the documents are requested on the basis of citizenship anyway.

The entry fork

The comparison is worth making because the banks differ not in product — the debit card is the same everywhere — but in the document they demand at the door and in what they add on top of the card. Those are the axes in the table.

The last column is short because the banks are: none of the six publishes a rule for money arriving from a Russian bank, and the only published list, Kaspi's, covers outgoing transfers. For a SWIFT payment from Russia the working check is therefore the chain rather than the receiving bank — whether the sending Russian bank is on the Annex XIV list or under US blocking sanctions, and whether any correspondent in between is an EU or US institution. The same comparison for other countries' personal accounts sits in personal accounts abroad.

What the table yields is an order of operations, not a ranking. Kaspi publishes the widest list of bases of stay, so the first card almost always comes from there. The second account is opened for a purpose: BCC for SWIFT, Halyk or Forte once there is a deposit and a need for a relationship manager, Freedom when brokerage access should sit beside the account.

Kaspi Gold for a non-⁠resident

Kaspi Gold is Kaspi Bank's debit card: purchases, Kaspi QR payments, transfers inside Kazakhstan and abroad, and payment of more than 10,000 services in the Kaspi app all run through it (Kaspi Guide). The account behind the card is held in tenge only, while the card itself pays and withdraws cash abroad in any currency (Kaspi Guide). Citizens of any country can open it; for a foreigner without a Kazakh residence permit the card is valid for one year and is then reissued (Kaspi Guide), while a card issued before 19 January 2025 keeps its original expiry (Kaspi Guide).

Kaspi's list for a foreigner, in the version updated on 24 September 2026 (Kaspi Guide), has four items: a smartphone with a Kazakh number, the original passport, the IIN (the original, a copy or the SMS from 1414), and one document of lawful stay — a visa, including an e-visa; a notification of stay; a temporary or permanent residence permit; a certificate from an educational institution; an accreditation card; a work permit; a kandas certificate; or an asylum-seeker certificate. A border-crossing stamp is not on the list. Citizens of Russia, Turkey, China and the other countries Kaspi names add the tax number of their country (TIN) and their actual address there. With a residence permit the application is completed in the app; without one, in any Kaspi branch.

Three terms weigh most on a Russian applicant. The card does not work in Russia: Kaspi lists Russia, Crimea, Iran, North Korea, Sudan and Syria as places where it neither pays nor withdraws cash, since Visa and Mastercard suspended operations in Russia and card operations in the other regions are barred by US sanctions (Kaspi Guide). One person holds one Kaspi Gold, and the bank refuses the card to an inactive taxpayer or to a client whose accounts are under arrest (Kaspi Guide). And money is charged on the way out: under the card terms, top-ups and transfers to another Kaspi Gold are free; a transfer to another Kazakh bank's card or abroad costs 0.95%, minimum KZT 200; cash from non-salary top-ups is free up to KZT 300,000 a month and costs 0.95% of the excess; annual service is free in the first year and KZT 1,995 from the second; reissue on expiry is free.

The premium tier

Only two banks on this market put premium thresholds in their open tariffs: Halyk and Forte.

Halyk Premium sits below the VIP and Super VIP packages for larger balances. The bank's debit card tariffs, in the version in force since 1 August 2026, price the three packages as follows:

The same schedule prices the basic package by residence: a non-resident pays KZT 1,800 a year for a digital card and KZT 3,000 with plastic, where a resident pays nothing in the first year.

Forte Solo — a Visa Signature or Mastercard Black Edition card — costs KZT 10,000 a month and is free in any month in which one of three conditions is met: an average deposit balance from KZT 4 million (tenge and dollar deposits count), purchases from KZT 500,000, or salary credits from KZT 1 million; the package includes a personal manager, a 24/7 concierge and airport lounges (DragonPass on Visa, Lounge Key on Mastercard). The deposit bar is less than half of Halyk's, but so is the content: the published Solo package lists neither safe boxes nor investment products.

BCC and Alatau City Bank publish no premium thresholds in their open tariffs; terms for larger clients are confirmed individually. The absence of a number here means an absent number, not an absent service.

The currency layer

BCC publishes the clearest retail currency channel: SWIFT transfers in USD, RUB, GBP and EUR from the bcc.kz app, from a current account in the transfer currency, up to USD 100,000 per transfer and per month and four transfers a month (BCC); other currencies go through a branch. That is why a client with foreign counterparties keeps BCC as a second account even with everyday retail at Kaspi; the Chinese side of such flows is covered in the Chinese banks overview.

Bank CenterCredit (BCC) states its non-resident terms in its own notices. A current account is opened on one identity document that carries the IIN (BCC), so the IIN comes first. Cards are opened only in person, a third party may not collect a card under a power of attorney, and the bank disowns online offers of remote card issuance to non-residents (BCC). Since 20 January 2025 a new card for a foreigner without a residence permit runs no longer than 12 months, and one client holds no more than five cards at the bank (BCC). From 31 October 2026 non-resident clients move to separate SWIFT tariffs, while citizens of Kazakhstan and foreigners with a valid residence permit keep the current ones (BCC), so the currency channel is priced on the date of the transfer.

Large tenge balances are another matter: the currency is volatile, and savings are usually held through multi-currency accounts rather than parked in KZT unhedged.

Beyond the retail fork

Two banks in the country answer questions this fork does not contain. Alatau City Bank — formerly Jusan Bank (Alatau City Bank) — is profiled separately, including its digital-asset line. Freedom Bank is interesting not for its retail line but for belonging to the Freedom Holding group, listed on Nasdaq under the ticker FRHC, with a brokerage arm. Both subjects live in their own write-ups because they turn on licences and regimes rather than on card-opening terms; the wider licensing landscape sits in the Kazakhstan crypto licences overview and the AIFC profile.

Who each bank suits

A relocator arriving for the first time without a residence permit: Kaspi Gold — the widest list of accepted bases of stay and the payment infrastructure the country's everyday retail runs on; the wider move is covered in the relocation from Russia overview.

An entrepreneur settling with foreign counterparties: BCC as the second account, with the corporate layer still built around an LLP or an AIFC structure.

A client with a deposit: Halyk at KZT 10 million if the wider premium ecosystem matters, Forte at KZT 4 million if a lighter package is enough.

The market as a whole does not suit anyone counting on getting a card without travelling, or anyone looking for global-grade private banking.

Risks