Kazakhstan’s financial regulators have allowed license and supervision fees to be paid in USD-pegged stablecoins.
Kazakhstan’s Astana Financial Services Authority (AFSA), a designated financial authority for the Astana International Financial Centre (AIFC), has launched a project enabling AIFC members to pay regulatory fees in USD-pegged stablecoins.
The regulator announced on Thursday that the project was officially launched at the local event Astana Finance Days 2025, signing a related multilateral memorandum of understanding (MMoU) with the centralized crypto exchange (CEX) Bybit.
“This initiative represents a first-of-its-kind regulatory framework for payments in stablecoins in the region, signaling Kazakhstan’s ambition to position the AIFC as a hub for digital finance […],” AFSA CEO Evgeniya Bogdanova said.
Replacing fiat-only payments
Currently, companies pay regulatory fees primarily through traditional methods such as bank transfers and wire payments in fiat currencies such as the US dollar and the Kazakhstani tenge, a spokesperson for Bybit told Cointelegraph.
“These methods are functional but often involve delays, high transaction costs and limited flexibility, especially for firms whose primary treasury is held in digital assets,” the representative said.
With stablecoins like Tether USDt (USDT) or Circle’s USDC (USDC), the parties are provided with a fast, cost-efficient, and transparent payment option, the Bybit spokesperson noted.
Participation is subject to eligibility criteria
According to the official statement from the AFSA, the project’s participation requires signing an MMoU, subject to meeting the authority’s eligibility criteria.
Bybit became the inaugural signatory of the MMoU, which was signed during Astana Finance Days 2025 by AFSA’s Bogdanova and Bybit CEO Mazurka Zeng.
The names of the providers participating in the new project will be published on the official AFSA website after signing an MMoU, the regulator said.
Cointelegraph approached the AFSA for comment regarding the project details, including eligibility criteria, but had not received a response at the time of publication.
Jesse Knutson, head of operations at Bitfinex Securities — which has been operating in Kazakhstan since 2021 — told Cointelegraph that the AFSA’s project “demonstrates how central stablecoins like USDt are to the development of tokenised financial markets.”
“FSA led the way by becoming one of the first to develop a regulatory regime for the issuance and listing of tokenised securities, and they are again a first-mover in accepting USDt and others as a fungible currency for their own regulatory fees,” Knutson said.
Related: ECB president calls to address risks from non-EU stablecoins
The news came amid crypto gaining momentum in Kazakhstan, with the US-regulated crypto custodian BitGo assisting the launch of Central Asia’s first spot Bitcoin ETF by the local company Fonte Capital in August.
Kazakhstan has emerged as a major player in the crypto industry, including cryptocurrency mining. In June, local authorities also reported studying the concept of a state-run crypto reserve, likely funded by digital assets mined or seized by the government.
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