This country is Kazakhstan. This is where we recently hosted OpenWay Club Central Asia 2025. The event brought together our clients and partners from Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan — leading banks, issuing and acquiring processors, fintechs, national financial regulators, international payment schemes, and local payment solution vendors.
For decades, OpenWay has been a proud member and technology enabler of this community of payment innovators. At the event, we announced the expansion of our local delivery and support forces in this region — further strengthening our ability to meet growing project demand and accelerate our clients’ time to market. We also continue to share our global best practices with local banks and help them successfully adapt these ideas to regional realities.
This year our agenda focused on new payment products and services, customer experiences, and revenue streams driven by embedded agentic AI, crypto, real-time cross-border transactions, API-first strategies, and hyper-personalization. These topics were illustrated with use cases and projects from OpenWay’s global client base, powered by our Way4 issuing, acquiring, and wallet solutions.
The AI strategies of OpenWay and its clients align closely with Kazakhstan’s forward-looking national vision. As confirmed by @Binur Zhalenov, Chief Digital Officer at the National Bank of Kazakhstan, the regulator is already actively experimenting with AI and advanced data management — aggregating data from more than 1,200 banks, microfinance organizations, and other payment market players, and using these vast datasets to fine-tune AI language models and derive insights for more effective policymaking.
Through the teamwork of our colleagues and partners across Belgium, Kazakhstan, Cyprus, Serbia, Georgia, Canada, Italy, Ukraine, and Finland, the event was truly glocal — blending discussions on global digital payment trends with a deep focus on the specific needs of the Central Asian markets.
Thank you to everyone who joined us in Almaty and continues to inspire OpenWay’s mission — helping payment leaders across emerging and developed markets innovate with confidence!