WATCH: The Launch of Kazakhstan's Digital Tenge

Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) have the potential to revolutionize the way countries transact their currency. In this video, Salvador Perez Galindo, Senior Advisor, Global Government Engagement, Visa, and Binur Zhalenov, CEO of the National Payments Corporation (NPC) of Kazakhstan, discuss the launch of Kazakhstan’s CBDC, the Digital Tenge.

The Digital Tenge was launched on the 30th anniversary of the Tenge – the national currency of Kazakhstan – on November 15th, 2023. Visa has been proud to participate in this project from its inception, working with the Central Bank, the National Bank of Kazakhstan, and three client banks, Halyk Bank, Bank CenterCredit and Altyn Bank. From the start, the Digital Tenge had full interoperability with debit cards and Visa was able to support the launch of the first CBDC-linked Visa debit card in the world.

The Digital Tenge is not meant to replace existing forms of money, but rather to complement them and provide new features, such as offline payments, programmability, tokenization, and cross-border payments. The full rollout is expected by 2025.

To explore more, watch the video above and visit the Q&A interview at the provided link for more information.