Eurasian Bank launches Digital Tenge Card in preparation for Kazakhstan’s CBDC
Kazakhstan’s Eurasian Bank has launched the Digital Tenge Card in collaboration with Mastercard to enable consumers to make purchases using the country’s central banking digital currency (CBDC).
Eurasian Bank launches Digital Tenge Card
The debit card converts funds to traditional Tenge currency during in-store and online transactions, the first of which was made at the Congress of Financiers of Kazakhstan this week.
For merchants, it’s stated that the debit card does not require infrastructure updates to process and spending is protected by the same fraud and security guarantee incurred by other Mastercard card programmes.
Arriving in tandem with the 30th anniversary of Kazakhstan’s national currency, the launch of the debit card marks the latest development in the National Bank of Kazakhstan’s (NBRK) Digital Tenge project.
The central bank first began piloting the digital currency in June 2021, using a prototype platform to test its technical feasibility.
This was followed by the inception of a decision-making framework in 2022, with the Digital Tenge being successfully tested in a real world environment for the first time later that year.
The central bank has dedicated this year and most of next to exploring various use cases for the currency beyond the initial retail proposition, and inducing the first stages of implementation.
Eurasian Bank is a registered anchor partner for the implementation of the project, and says that it has been “actively co-operating” with the central bank “for several years”.
It anticipates the next stage of the partnership concerning “wallet openings to QR transfers and loyalty programme tokenisation”, but for now, is pre-emptively launching the debit card ahead of the digital currency’s intended first public issuance in late 2025, following a planned three-stage introduction.
The choice of the Mastercard network to support the debit card’s processing is also notable, not only because it boasts 100 million acceptance points worldwide, but as it also follows the launch of Mastercard’s CBDC Partner Programme in August.
The programme seeks to bring together key players in the blockchain and payment service space to create a better understanding of the scope of CBDCs and how they can be implemented. Inaugural members include Ripple, Consensys, Fluency, Idemia, Fireblocks and Giesecke+Devrient.
