Kaspi.kz Reports Q2 2026 Results: Full Earnings Call Transcript

On Monday, Kaspi.kz (NASDAQ:KSPI) discussed second-quarter financial results during its earnings call. The full transcript is provided below.

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The full earnings call is available at https://www.netroadshow.com/events/login/1PeTHmojHfRARPFCn6zwFIN5ypF9TKIPswVeQ

Summary

Kaspi.kz reported a 15% increase in revenue and a 5% rise in adjusted EBITDA for Q2 2026, with a board recommendation to increase dividends by 18%.

E-commerce GMV grew by 28% year-over-year on a constant currency basis, driven by growth in both Kazakhstan and Turkey, with a focus on enhancing delivery and advertising services.

The company launched 'Casper', an AI personal assistant, aimed at improving the shopping experience by providing faster and more relevant product recommendations.

Kaspi.kz completed the acquisition of Rabobank, securing a banking license and planning to invest $300 million to expand its fintech capabilities, with new products expected to roll out next year.

Kaspi's strategic focus includes enhancing customer experience in Turkey and Kazakhstan, with an emphasis on fintech integration to drive future growth.

Full Transcript

David Ferguson, Managing Director

Thanks, Sami. Good morning. Good afternoon, everyone. I'm David Ferguson from Kaspi.kz. Welcome to our second quarter and first half 2026 financial results call. With me is Kaspi.kz's CEO and co-founder Mikhail Lomtadze and our deputy CEOs Tangyisma Cities and Yuri Tidenko. As usual, Mikhail will take you through the financial and strategic highlights from the second quarter. I'll talk through the broader financials and then we'll open the call up to Q&A. So on that note, over to you, Mikhail.

Mikhail Lomtadze, CEO & Chief Ecosystem Officer

Yeah, thank you, David. Thank you for everyone joining this call. So our financial performance for the second quarter is strong. The revenue went up 15%, adjusted EBITDA 5%. Considering the performance and the strong financial position of the company, the board is recommending to increase the dividends by 18% compared to the first Q dividend. Our core businesses continue to perform: the marketplace GMV +15%, driven by the e-commerce, which is our strategic, most important focus both in Kazakhstan and Turkey.

It's 28% growth on a constant currency basis. TPV, our major business in payments, still continues to grow very nicely, around 13% growth quarter on quarter on average, and the net loan portfolio continues to grow strongly, around 18% year over year. E-commerce is the area which we believe is extremely important for us. That's the final destination for our consumers and merchants. It is where we can add the most value in terms of enabling purchases and connecting merchants and sellers.

So e-commerce GMV has grown nicely, around 28% on a constant currency basis year over year, and the take rate continues to expand. The main driver of the take rate is the value-added services, which we continue scaling, and that's about delivery and advertising. What is important is how engaged the consumers remain and how frequently they transact with us. So the number of purchases per consumer continued to grow in both Turkey and Kazakhstan, and the e-com purchases grew 33%, which is a very nice growth.

And we delivered in excess of 76 million purchases in the second quarter. About 20% of our GMV is 1P, and that is 1P mainly the e-grocery in Kazakhstan, which is the fastest-growing e-commerce vertical for us, and the 1P in Turkey, which is electronics and historically has been a category for 1P in Turkey. And we are about 53% of our GMV in Kazakhstan and 47% in Turkey. Again, the important priorities for us are to continue building up our e-commerce capabilities and making sure that the delivery quality and the speed are improving, the value-added services are monetized, and we continue working on converting the traffic and the properties that we have into the purchases from our consumers—so connecting merchants and consumers to each other successfully. E-commerce has been growing the take rate with the value-added services. As you can see, the value-added services grew 49% on a constant currency basis and 27% real growth, growing faster on the constant currency basis than e-commerce revenue. Again, just to reinforce the fact that we are extremely responsible in terms of growing those additional services and making sure that we deliver value for the merchants, and also we make sure that our services are highly reliable on the delivery side and highly relevant on the advertising side.

If we sort of promote something to our consumers, that's actually something they really need, and we deliver value to both merchants and the consumers through this experience. We're also approaching this new stage of our company's development. As you know, Kaspi.kz has done reinventions of itself or transformations multiple times during its history. We started from financial services, then we expanded into the ecosystem of everyday services, and then we united all these everyday services in a single super app.

And now we are approaching the stage when we want to develop the personal AI assistant which will help with everyday tasks to our consumers and to our merchants. On the first of July we launched Casper, which is the assistant for our consumers. We started with one task now, which is actually enabling shopping. So Casper actually is built on our technology and is built on our Data and built on our consumer experience, and it's in a single mobile application. So it's actually integrated in our super app. So Casper — we call him Casper, our new personal assistant — and he can actually understand your needs, he can recommend the best products, he can engage in a conversation with you and ask clarifying questions, compare different products, give you the reviews, and so on and so forth. And it's enabled in voice and text, so you can either type your task or you can record it by voice, and then Casper helps you to find the right product for you.

You know, among 20 million products in our Kazakhstan e-commerce platform, he can follow up with smart questions and then lead you to the right product for you, which you can after, you know, complete in our e-commerce. So we have launched it on the 1st of July. We have been scaling during the month, so now it's available to everyone — to all our consumers in Kazakhstan. So it has been very rapid scaling. It's still early to give you any detailed performance metrics, but I think the metrics we already have are quite encouraging.

One out of five customers, where Casper was available, actually used it. Response rate is around three seconds. This just tells you that all the investments we have done both in compute, but also in optimizing the speed, have paid off really nicely. So you as a consumer get a response really quickly, which is extremely important for any AI model or assistant. The consumers are looking for products across pretty much the entire catalog. So 22 product categories have been covered so far, which is pretty much our entire catalog.

Which just tells you that Casper is performing tasks across a wide range of the products that we have. Eight in 10 conversations — so 80% of conversations — actually end up with a product recommendation, and 60% of those take the customer through to a specific product. So if you are looking for a vacuum cleaner, he will guide you through the process, understand your needs, and then you basically have your product in the shopping cart. What is important is obviously the speed.

Casper is 50% faster than just regular product discovery, 50% faster adding to favorites, and 30% faster to the basket. So again, what we believe is that this sort of technology or this customer experience is leapfrogging all the traditional ways of finding products. You're scrolling, you are reading, you are analyzing the information on the screen, you are tapping buttons, and so on and so forth. So you are spending much more time going through multiple stages of product discovery and understanding the product that you need yourself.

Casper is actually speeding up this process. Casper is helping to find products faster, and he really is working on the task with you rather than you typing in the search box the name of the product. So highly relevant, highly reliable, faster. And those are the most important metrics for us at the moment. Our goal is to build the trusted assistant — assistant equals trust — which means that if you don't trust your assistant, you can easily fire him.

So we treat Casper like your personal assistant. And our priority now is to build trust, which means highly reliable, highly relevant service that actually helps you to buy a product which is exactly the product that you need. So this is our priority as we're scaling Casper. It's just one month, but those are really very encouraging metrics that we observe with the interaction of consumers with Casper. This is just an example of the queries which basically tell you how different this interaction is with Casper compared to traditional search or the traditional way to find products.

You usually type the product that you have in mind, and then the traditional e-commerce or marketplace way to offer you a product is trying to give you a selection of products which you then are reading through, familiarizing yourself with the ratings, and narrowing it down through filters and other navigation tools which have been developed over time. So when customers are interacting with Casper now, they just give him a task: I want to give my goddaughter a gift for her second birthday; or I want an aftershave for consistency and effect that has a strong smell; or I want a sprayer that I can set up next to the house so it creates a cool mist. I mean this type of interaction, and the type of tasks which Casper is getting and able to solve, is really remarkable. We are true believers in this technology which we have been developing already for quite some time behind the scenes and getting ready to scale it. It's really remarkable how consumers interact, how Casper really helps.

And those examples which you see here actually ended up in a real order. It's really important when you think how customers do mission shopping, how they're focused on delivery: give me the items which can be delivered within three hours; or solve this type of problem which I have — after double-sided tape adhesive was left on the plastic window, what product will help to remove it? This is not the regular search. This is you asking someone to help with an advice.

So all those things are extremely encouraging for us. We're scaling Casper as we speak in our e-commerce platform, and again our mission is to develop a personal assistant for everyday tasks. E-commerce and shopping is just the one task we're now focused on, but in the future we believe that Casper can help with all other tasks across all our services in our super app. Now I just would like to give you a bit of a demo, so some of you that actually watch the screen, I think it would be pretty cool.

So David, can we go to the demo? Casper actually has a dedicated space in our e-commerce, so you can basically type the task which you want Casper to perform. For example: I need a vacuum cleaner. Then Casper does basic analysis and he starts asking you clarifying questions. For example, what type of vacuum cleaner suits you best. Then he goes into the requirements. One of the things which is important for any vacuum cleaner is the size of your apartment, so he will ask you to clarify the size of your apartment.

Then he will ask you the budget — what's your budget within which you want to buy the vacuum cleaner. And then in basically a couple of seconds he pulls together for you different vacuum cleaners which are available on Kaspi.kz. They are described in simple language. He gives you a list of the vacuum cleaners which are acceptable for you. Then you can ask him to compare specific models and then he runs the comparison, so on one screen you can see the main characteristics and you can compare the products.

You can actually use your voice, so you can give him tasks with your voice. And this task can be actually something which is really cool in terms of added value, like: which of these vacuum cleaners is best suited for a person with allergies? He gives you a selection of the products which fit this criteria and explains why. If you see some technical term, then you can ask him — for example, he's telling you that the HEPA filter is important — and you can ask him: what is a HEPA filter?

And he can tell you in simple language what a HEPA filter is. Then you select the vacuum cleaner you want, you push the button, and that's it. You can continue through the checkout and actually buy the product. All the chats are obviously stored, personalized, and things like that. You can go back and forth. So it's really very interesting. It's an important development for us. As I've said, we are starting from the shopping experience because that's where we can add most of the value, but over time we plan Casper to expand in all our services in our super app.

Also, the service is highly scalable and, when it's built on high-quality data, can become highly relevant. And obviously Casper is highly scalable to all our other markets and businesses. So, you know, we'll be thinking about scaling him to Turkey as well. Another quick update: we have secured the banking license. We've basically completed the acquisition of Rabobank, and now we're building up our fintech capabilities. We will be investing around $300 million, as we initially said, just for the capital of the bank.

We're scaling fintech products now and we're building up the capabilities to roll them out next year. We expect no material impact this year. But obviously, fintech and financial services is where we started. We're true believers that you can deliver the most value to your consumers and to your merchants when you actually combine capabilities of fintech and e-commerce together. That's something which is important strategically for us. This is something where we're extremely experienced and successful, and we'll be rolling them out next year — the fintech products, both for consumers and merchants.

We're not sitting idle, obviously. We have been working on launching the new shopping loan based on the consumer finance license which we already have in Turkey. We've launched the new shopping loan on Hepsiburada. Basically, the flow is extremely similar to what you actually have in Kaspi.kz. You can select the products, and based on the product you can select the monthly payment which fits your needs best, and then you can proceed seamlessly through the checkout.

So this product we are piloting, and the new shopping loan is already 0.54% of GMV in June. Again, we have been preparing ourselves for quite some time. In any financial services, originating a loan or financing customers is step number one; being paid back is more important than originating the loan. So for all these months we have been building up our risk management capabilities, rolling out risk management which consists of the approval, managing the consumer, and also the collection process.

The entire loan journey we have been implementing and rolling out now. Now we're comfortable with all the metrics, and we're piloting the new cash loan basically on the Hepsiburada platform. Again, we're strong believers that combining around the consumers and merchants — the shopping experience and the fintech experience and the financial products — will create a lot of value for consumers and merchants, and therefore a lot of value for the company.

The products which we'll be focused on to roll out, as we build the foundation for them, will be products around shopping, around merchants, and all the products that Kaspi.kz has. So we have pure shopping loan, BNPL, merchant finance, and consumer finance products, and obviously savings accounts, and so on and so forth. You can expect that next year we'll be launching those products in Turkey. The banking license allows us to do that, and the technology we're rolling out in Turkey — underwriting and risk management — basically all those things are coming together very nicely.

So we're very optimistic about launching financial services and fintech products in Turkey.

David Ferguson, Managing Director

All right, so thank you. So just to run through the financials, starting firstly with marketplace. Marketplace constant-currency GMV growth up 15% year on year. As you saw, that's driven by e-commerce. GMV growth up 28%, with m-commerce and travel broadly flat. Consistent with trends in the first quarter, take rate increase 110 bps to 12.1%, again driven by e-commerce and specifically advertising and delivery. The revenue and EBITDA growth of 11% and 9%.

That is reported growth, not constant currency, so impacted by 21% depreciation of the Turkish lira versus the Kazakh tenge. That's the first thing to keep in mind. And the second thing to keep in mind: 9% EBITDA growth. That differential versus revenue growth, that margin pressure, that's the least pronounced we've seen actually for the last couple of years, and despite the investments that we're making into Hepsiburada. Moving on to payments. TPV growth up 13%.

That's a slight moderation, reflecting a slight moderation in inflation. And as inflation continues to come down, TPV growth will reduce accordingly. The take rate declines by 7 bps. So again, that is something similar to what we saw in the first quarter. Long-run trend though driven by changes in product mix in favor of Kaspi Pay. The result is reported revenue growth up 5% and EBITDA down 1%. The pressure on EBITDA is two things. Number one, it's the investment in Kaspi Alaqan — that's pay by palm — it's tech and product development spend.

And number two, you should keep in mind the adjusted EBITDA excludes the interest revenue that payments generate, so that interest revenue is up 15% year on year. That's not reflected in EBITDA but is reflected in net income. It's net income accretive. And then on to FinTech. Firstly, we talked on our last call about strategically focusing on loans that generate more revenue. These are longer-duration loans. So what that really means is within the loan portfolio the mix is shifting.

BNPL, short-duration, low-revenue-generating loan, is getting smaller in the mix. Other loans, general purpose, merchant financing, are growing in share within the mix. So you're seeing decent loan portfolio growth, up 18%. The mix changing in favor of higher revenue generating loans. Pricing is stable, and so the result is faster revenue growth — revenue growth above net loan portfolio growth — and revenue growth up 23% year on year. So that's the first point.

The second point would be that you see the cost of funding remains an issue, up 150 bps year on year in the second quarter. However, as some of you will have seen, Kazakhstan lowered its National Bank rate at the end of June. And we lowered, on one of our products, our deposit rate last week, effective last Wednesday, I believe. So that was our first rate cut for over two years. It applies to our three-month duration product, which is around 30% of deposits.

We lowered the rate from 20% to 19%. So clearly this isn't reflected in Q2 numbers. Some of it will be reflected in Q3. It's a three-month duration product, so it'll be reflected to a much greater extent in the fourth quarter, and then fully as we go into next year. But the bigger point to keep in mind is this isn't just about one rate cut. For the last several years on this call we've been talking about how high rates have been a pressure on the bottom line.

If inflation continues to fall in Kazakhstan, rates will continue to come down. You can see that growth in our deposits is strong, up 21%. So naturally we will be able to pass those rate cuts through, and that will be very beneficial at the bottom line for us over actually not just one quarter but potentially over the next couple of years. In the second quarter, EBITDA up 6% versus the revenue growth of 23%. On the risk side of things, cost of risk 0.7%.

That's up slightly versus 0.6% in the second quarter of last year, but flat quarter on quarter. We would expect cost of risk to moderate slightly in the second half of the year. The NPL ratio, NPL coverage trends, consistent with what we've talked about previously. As the portfolio mix shifts, particularly towards merchant financing and to a lesser extent the car loan, these are products with a higher probability of collection. Therefore we keep those NPLs on the balance sheet for longer.

A higher probability of collection means they require less coverage. So this remains just a function of changing mix. If you look at the real-time credit metrics, whether it be first, second payment default on the left or delinquency rates on the right, they remain low and stable. So to wrap everything up for the second quarter, reported revenue up 15% driven by e-commerce and FinTech revenue growth; adjusted EBITDA up 5%, impacted by higher rates and investments into Turkey; and net income flat, again reflecting those same pressures on EBITDA. And you should also keep in mind that the regulatory changes that were announced last year, particularly higher National Bank reserve requirements, have been introduced in two phases. The first phase was last year. The second kick-up was in the second quarter of this year. So you see that pressuring net income. As we go into next year, that is in the base as well. On the guidance, just another way of cutting things up: I think this very clearly illustrates where the pressure on profitability is coming from.

It's coming from interest rates. We've always said that is cyclical. It now looks like the start of the cycle is going from being negative — from being a headwind — to being a tailwind. If you think about the investments that we're making into Hepsiburada and these things — tech and product spending, sales and marketing — they're not just in Turkey, they're in Kazakhstan as well. But actually you can see that in the context of Kaspi KZ, given its earnings generation, they're relatively small.

That's whether you cut it from an earnings perspective or if you look at it from a dividend perspective, the cash that we're able to return, despite these factors and despite these investments. On the guidance: GMV up 17% as of the first half of the year. Guidance for the full year remains around 20%. We would expect faster trends in the second half versus the second quarter, driven by the timing of promotional events and other product initiatives.

TPV growth up 13% versus the guidance of around 15%. Assuming inflation moderates, that will be a downward pressure, although integration with Apple Pay should see us benefit from higher overseas volumes, particularly over the summer period. And as we talked about, we've moved from TPV guidance to average net loan portfolio guidance: 20% in the first half of the year, guiding for 15% for the full year. EBITDA is trending up 7% at this stage in the year versus the guidance of around 15%.

So overall we're comfortably on track for where we expected to be at this point in the year. So on that note, Sami, let's open the call up please to Q&A.

Sami, Operator

Thank you very much. If you'd like to ask a question and you've joined the call via Zoom, please press the Raise Hand icon on your screen. If you joined the call via phone, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. Our first question comes from Gabor Kemeny. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Gabor Kemeny, Analyst

Hello, thank you for the presentation. Can I first ask about the fintech business, please? Indeed, a decline in your deposit pricing for the first time. I think you cut your deposit rates around two months after the central bank policy rate cut. Is this dynamics reflective of how you expect your pricing to evolve in light of the central bank policy rates? And can you share your thoughts on how your deposit pricing may evolve in the next few quarters?

My other question would be just on a combination of this very quick deposit growth in the quarter coupled with a drop in your deposit pricing. If you can elaborate a bit further on these trends, please, which clearly left you in a better funding position than you have been for some time. And my final question would be on the marketplace dynamics. Looks like Kazakhstan was growing more quickly this time than Turkey. Can you shed some light on how these respective markets are evolving?

Thank you.

David Ferguson, Managing Director

Mikhail, do you want to take actually all of those questions?

Mikhail Lomtadze, CEO & Chief Ecosystem Officer

Yeah, sure. Hi, Gabor. Thank you for your questions. In terms of the deposit rates, in general we are really focused on acquiring customers and delivering them the best product and experience. The previous actions we had resulted in a very strong customer and deposit inflow. In terms of our strategy for pricing in the future, our general strategy will remain the same. We look at the dynamics and, if we believe that there is a relationship considering the market dynamics and the rates on the market between the way that we price our products and how we acquire customers, and if we believe that there is room to reduce the interest rate because changing rates on the market allow us to do so, then we will do it. There is no magical formula behind it, and our decision to reduce the rate was driven by these dynamics. You should expect a positive financial impact by the end of the year as deposits turn on this specific product, which is the three‑month savings account, around 30% of our deposit base. The duration of deposits is three months, so all the deposits will be repriced when the duration is finished—basically in three months.

In terms of marketplace dynamics, we have a bit different strategies by market. Our e‑commerce is a priority, but in Kazakhstan we are developing a consumer experience based on specific verticals, and that gives us successful growth. We are also growing extremely fast on the e‑grocery side, which helps both with consumer engagement and profitability on the marketplace, but most importantly, growth. In Kazakhstan, our strategy is working vertical by vertical.

Electronics has not really recovered because of all the price changes and the conflict in the Middle East and things like that—supply chain is still challenging, GPU and chip prices going up. You still see the growth because all other verticals are growing very nicely—everything around clothing, car spare parts, home items, and things like that. We’re really happy with the way we’re proceeding in Kazakhstan, and the strategy there is go vertical by vertical.

In Turkey, considering that we’re just starting to actually launch products for consumers—especially on the fintech side—for us it is extremely important to work on foundational things. Even though growth has been there, our focus has not been on growth. Our focus has been on the consumer: consumer experience, net promoter score, merchant experience, and delivery speed, which we have improved dramatically during the last 12 months year over year.

Consumer frequency of transactions increased 15% in Turkey. Basically, the strategy there, to put it in simple words, it’s much better to have a million customers who love you, rather than 3 million or 5 million customers who have just occasional shopping with you. The reason why we want this 1 million customers to love us is because next products which we will launch, they will use those products if they are in love with our existing consumer experience.

So in Turkey, growth has not been the goal—we have grown nicely. Our goal is to make customers even happier and merchants even happier. We’re building the foundation for the phase of growth coming next year, and we want to drive the adoption of the new products which we will launch next year, especially on the fintech side.

David Ferguson, Managing Director

Maybe I just had one, Gabor, on Turkey. When you’re looking at its performance in the second quarter, I think you should look actually at order growth over the first half, because you probably remember there was a lot of retail disruption in Turkey in the first half—March, April—of last year. So that distorts the comp quarter on quarter both in Q1 and Q2, and probably if you look over a longer period of time, H1 where orders increased just under 18%, you get a better indication of the performance of the business this year.

Gabor Kemeny, Analyst

Got it. Thank you.

Sami, Operator

Our next question comes from Maxim Nel. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Maxim Nel, Analyst

Hello. Thank you for the presentation. I have a couple of questions. The first one is very simple. Basically, your first half EBITDA growth was around 7% and was already trending above the full‑year guidance, while you mentioned the reduction in the deposit rates that should benefit you in the second half of the year. So, simply, why was EBITDA guidance unchanged, and how should we think about the second‑half growth and profitability? And the second topic I wanted to ask about—maybe not surprisingly—about AI and the Casper.

I know it’s quite early, but maybe if you can tell us about the early benefits you’ve been seeing so far or any measurable impact, and also in terms of the costs—what level of investment—and should we expect any significant costs related to that project? Thank you.

David Ferguson, Managing Director

Thanks, Max. Maybe I’ll take the first question on the guidance and then Mikhail can take the AI‑related question. You are right, we lowered the rate on the three‑month deposit—that’s around 30% of the deposit base—last week, last Wednesday. It will take three months to fully reprice that, so you’re looking at the benefit really starting to come through from the second half, second part of November, so really only one full month this year. So you’re right, there is some benefit this year, but it’s for a relatively short period of time. The full benefit of that, and actually potentially other rate cuts that we might see, will be felt from the beginning of next year.

Mikhail Lomtadze, CEO & Chief Ecosystem Officer

On the customer, do you want to, David, pull out the slide? With the metrics? Yeah. Great. So, in terms of the customer, here we’re just one month into it. Obviously we have been working with Casper ourselves for much, much longer, but our consumers across Kazakhstan have now been rolled out across the whole country on our e‑commerce platform. As I mentioned, the initial results are quite encouraging. One out of five customers are using it, and most importantly, Casper completes tasks much faster—two times faster for a consumer to add a product to favorites, 30% faster to add to the basket—and those are very important metrics.

The metrics that we’re focused on now are all about trust. Casper needs to perform the tasks which he is given, because trust is the most important first phase for this type of service. This service needs to give you recommendations and help and guide you through the process in a highly reliable and highly relevant manner. We’re quite encouraged with Casper’s performance. In terms of the investments, we have done quite a lot—not only investments in building the data center, which we did last year, a modern data center which enables us enough compute—and that results in a number which you see, like three seconds for the response, which I think is remarkable. He can give you highly relevant recommendations when analyzing and going across such a wide range of the products that we sell in just three seconds, and then he can also give you some added‑value answers based on some of the tasks you give him. It’s not just a product listing, but things around the product like reviews, delivery times, ratings, and so on and so forth. Going forward, we are not thinking about—first of all, if you think about our competitive advantage compared to many other companies—is that we are operating in a 20‑million‑people market.

When you think about scaling this type of service in an environment when you operate in a 100‑million‑people market, you have exponential costs associated with rolling out such service. But we can enable, in a very cost‑efficient manner, launching the service in Kazakhstan at reasonable costs, and that allows us to develop the product, to train the models, and ensure that consumer experience is highly relevant and high quality at a very reasonable cost.

We’re not really talking at the moment in terms of price per tokens or anything like that because we are a transactional business. What we will measure this functionality on in the future is based on how much it actually costs Casper to complete the task, and the task is to enable the purchase. We are a transactional business. The reason why we have been successful historically is because we’re always focused on enabling the transaction. We are not just a chatbot.

We are not a fancy lifestyle business. We are a transactional business. We enable consumers to buy, pay, and shop, and everything that we do eventually results in a transaction. That’s an extremely powerful business model. It gives us a competitive advantage because transacting means highly relevant information around the transaction. The reason why Casper has all the ingredients to be highly accurate is because the layer of data he operates on is extremely accurate.

That is the foundation of both our competitive advantage and our ability to get this up and running at a very reasonable cost. The cost will be measured against the transaction—which means complete the purchase—and it’s highly scalable, which means we can deploy this technology in the future in other markets.

Maxim Nel, Analyst

Got it. Thank you so much. If I may add another question on payments—there have been some news about the national QR system. I wonder if you can comment if you saw any changes or any impact, and how should investors think about the long‑term impact on the payments business and possibly take rates in the future.

Mikhail Lomtadze, CEO & Chief Ecosystem Officer

Well, our take rate, you know, as we have said before, you know, is trending towards what is the majority of the payment transactions, and that is actually the transactions which are through our payment system and QR, which is priced around 0.95. So that's the trend you actually observe. What we have done during the last, in the second quarter, we have introduced two things. You know, we have introduced Apple Pay, which, you know, we didn't have before because we thought that Apple Pay was not really necessary for the consumers if we can build much better experience ourselves locally.

So we introduced Apple Pay and Google Pay. And that introduction was driven by the fact that, you know, the ability to transact with Apple Pay or Google Pay when you travel was something which consumers really asked us quite a lot. So we have decided to launch that service and it brought us additional payment volumes when our consumers travel abroad. So that had the positive impact. In Kazakhstan, you know, it doesn't have such an impact. So mostly for the international, because again our consumers are paying with the Kaspi mobile application in this range.

So we have, what about, I don't remember exact number, but you know, whatever, 800,000 plus minus points where you can pay with the Kaspi mobile application. So, you know, consumer in Kazakhstan is extremely happy and merchants are, you know, seamlessly both transacting with each other through our technical capabilities which we have built. Alaqan also performs really nicely, especially in the environment where the pay by Palm is in a high frequency.

So those sorts of environments have been performing really nicely. And we actually scaled Alaqan across the country now during the last, what is it, 30 plus days, and then we connected to the, we worked really closely with the National Bank. The priority of National Bank and us and, you know, all other players in the market was really to make sure that the payment system is highly scalable because of the volumes now on the market, but also highly secured.

So we have really successfully worked with them during the last, you know, I would say six months, maybe plus minus, to really help to build the secure payment functionality. So that functionality is there. And our consumers continue transacting with our merchants where they used to, and also we're getting additional volumes when, you know, everybody else is transacting with their mobile applications through the vast majority of our payments network.

So now we see, you know, both our consumers and other consumers transacting through the payment network which is accessible for everyone. So we're extremely happy that there is the wide variety of the payment methods as well from everyone, and the consumers can choose and they choose, you know, as I've described before, they can choose the most convenient option. When you are traveling, you pay with Apple Pay. When you're in Kazakhstan, you pay with the Kaspi QR or the Kaspi mobile application.

Sami, Operator

Our next question comes from James Friedman. James, your line is open. Please go ahead.

James Friedman, Analyst

Hi, good morning. Good evening. Mikhail, in your prepared remarks you alluded to some of the growth initiatives you're anticipating for Turkey next year. Could you, I realize now that's not the time, but next year maybe, so could you just remind us what some of those growth plans are for 2027?

Mikhail Lomtadze, CEO & Chief Ecosystem Officer

Hi James. Yeah, thank you. So I mean our growth, the way we operate again is we're focused on things which are foundational for the merchant experience and the consumer. The things which will drive growth next year and are coming through this year are really around increasing the speed of delivery. So we have increased the speed of delivery roughly about, yeah, quite substantially. So that actually means higher speed of delivery means better conversion rates and the return customers because they are happy with the consumer experience.

So the growth on the e-commerce side will just continue growing consumer engagement, mobile app usage, and all the ingredients of this, which is really about delivery and the user experience, and so on and so forth. In terms of something which we believe will be fueling long-term growth is fintech products. And the fintech products we are really excited about just because that's where our experience is on the one hand. But on the other hand, you know, consumers really don't need the loan, they need to buy a TV set.

So once you are in e-commerce and the marketplace platform where you actually see the consumer making the actual purchases for the items, this is the best place where the buying decision is happening. So, you know, this is the best place to introduce the fintech products. So shopping loan, for example, which we have introduced, the new shopping loan which is 0.4% of GMV now, that's a new flow which enables customers to finance their products seamlessly.

And then there is a whole range of the merchant products like merchant finance and things like that, which we have done in our home market. So those would be the primary products which we will launch on the consumer and the merchant side. But also, you know, we will be launching the savings products, because in order to fund your growth you really need the savings. And we do have, you know, incredibly simple, transparent products which are highly popular in our home market.

And those are some of the ideas which we'll bring, and technology behind it, because that's something which enables us to scale, we'll bring into 2027. So to put it simply, there will be fintech products around consumers helping them to fund the purchases, fintech products for the merchants so they can actually acquire some of the inventory, and then the savings product which will enable fintech to continue to scale long term. The fact that we have about $300 million investing into the capital actually gives us a very strong start, because that's the funding which we can also use in order to, you know, in order to start scaling the fintech products next year. And this year we're just building up regular stuff. You know, we just acquired the bank, so we've taken over operational control. So banking systems and things like that for local reporting purposes is something which we're building up. Everything else we're very comfortable, you know, risk management we already rolled out, and, yeah, and the mobile application experience we're already building up in the shopping level.

James Friedman, Analyst

Great, thank you for that. And then, you know, this is the first time that I've analyzed the company that we've seen rates go in your favor. And I'm just wondering how long does it take to get repriced to the market? What I mean is in terms of consumer behavior, what have you noticed historically in terms of rate changes going the other way? Yeah. How durable do you think that this cycle will be? Thank you very much, Jamie.

David Ferguson, Managing Director

I just look at inflation. If inflation continues, inflation's been falling now for most of this year. If inflation continues to come down, National Bank rates, which are very high in Kazakhstan by historical standards, will continue to come down. If National Bank rates continue to come down, our deposit rate will come down. You should remember that when rates went up, we weren't the first player in the market to raise rates. And when rates go down, it doesn't mean we'll be the, I wouldn't expect us to be the first player in the market to lower rates.

But the long-term dynamic will flow through. I've said to investors before that any rate cuts this year just should give you increased confidence about earnings growth next year. That's the sort of time frame to think about things. But again, it's not about one cut. What you're looking to see is rate cuts, inflation falling, and for that to be sustained, rate cuts to fall, for that to be sustained over multiple, over a decent period of time in exactly the same way.

This has been a headwind. I mean, you mentioned you've been covering us since beginning of 2024, and it's been a headwind for pretty much all of that time, two and a half years.

James Friedman, Analyst

Okay, thanks, David. Thanks, Mikhail.

Sami, Operator

We currently have no further questions, so I'd like to hand back to David for some closing remarks.

David Ferguson, Managing Director

All right, so Sami, thanks very much. Thank you everyone for your time today. Happy to follow up offline. We are in London and New York in early September, post the holiday period, so happy to follow up in person. So thanks again for your time today. Keep in touch and have a good summer. Thanks everyone. Bye bye.

Sami, Operator

Thank you. Bye bye. This concludes today's call. We thank everyone for joining. You may now disconnect your lines.

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