Visa announced the launch of a global payment service based on USDC stablecoins in dozens of countries, while Stripe resumed support for crypto payments after a five-year hiatus. In parallel, over 135 central banks around the world are testing or designing digital currencies (CBDC).
The digital payment infrastructure has entered a phase where cryptocurrencies, stablecoins, CBDCs, and neobanks are no longer an experiment but are beginning to merge into a single ecosystem. In 2026, Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, PayPal, and major fintech startups simultaneously announced new blockchain-based products. For businesses, this means the emergence of cheap cross-border payments, new customer onboarding channels, and pressure on the margins of traditional banks. For Kazakhstani companies, the question is no longer whether blockchain is needed, but whether they can integrate into the new rails before the market is taken over by global players and regional integrators like Alashed IT (it.alashed.kz).
Global Fintech Giants Restructure Digital Payments
In 2026, the global fintech market has entered a phase of scaling blockchain payments. According to McKinsey, the payment industry's revenue in 2023 exceeded $2.2 trillion and continues to grow at a rate of 6-8 percent per year, but the structure of this growth is changing: almost half of the new income comes from digital wallets, neobanks, and embedded finance. Against this backdrop, Visa and Mastercard are betting on stablecoins and tokenization to maintain control over money flows.
Visa expanded its pilots using the USDC stablecoin on the Ethereum and Solana blockchains for settlements with merchants and acquiring banks in 2024-2026. The company stated that it is already testing automatic settlement of obligations to merchants in USDC, minimizing dependence on slow bank transfers. Mastercard, in turn, is developing the Multi-Token Network and Crypto Card programs, allowing fintech startups to issue cards linked to customers' cryptocurrency wallets, while the merchant still receives fiat currency.
In parallel, Stripe officially resumed support for crypto payments in 2024, starting with USDC on the Stellar network and later expanding to other networks. For the market, this is a symbolic moment: a company that publicly refused Bitcoin payments in 2018 due to volatility and fees, has now seen stablecoins as a sufficiently predictable and scalable tool. PayPal even earlier launched its own stablecoin PYUSD and began testing digital goods payments using blockchain. Such moves by major players instantly set standards for the ecosystem: from KYC/AML requirements to APIs through which merchants connect.
For businesses, this is not an abstract 'crypto revolution', but pressure on traditional acquiring and cross-border payment models. If international transfers used to take several days and cost 3-7 percent of the amount, stablecoin schemes promise fees of less than 1 percent and almost instant crediting of funds. This means that companies dependent on import, export, and freelance work should already be analyzing how to integrate new rails into their processes. Here, integrators who can combine traditional banking APIs and blockchain infrastructure come to the fore: companies like Alashed IT (it.alashed.kz) build gateways between the 'old' world of SWIFT and the 'new' world of tokenized money.
CBDC and Blockchain: How Central Banks Are Changing Payment Infrastructure
While commercial fintech companies are experimenting with stablecoins, central banks are accelerating digital currency (CBDC) projects. According to the Bank for International Settlements, more than 135 central banks on all continents are studying or testing digital currencies, and more than 20 jurisdictions have already moved to pilots or limited launches. The key goal is to reduce payment costs, ensure traceability, and reduce dependence on private stablecoins, which are gaining momentum.
The People's Bank of China continues to expand the e-CNY pilot: by 2025, digital yuan could be used for payments in dozens of cities through popular super apps. In Europe, the architecture of the digital euro was discussed in 2023-2025 with the participation of commercial banks and fintech companies, and the European Central Bank tested prototypes of offline payments and programmable payment scenarios (for example, limiting the targeted use of subsidies). In the United States, the Federal Reserve launched the FedNow instant payment system, which, although not a CBDC, lays the infrastructure for a future digital currency if a political decision is made.
Blockchain and distributed ledgers are not always used in their 'pure' form. Many central banks prefer hybrid architectures: centralized control of issuance and key records, but decentralized transaction processing using DLT technologies. This is necessary to withstand the load of millions of transactions per second, integrate with existing RTGS systems, and maintain control over the money supply. For regulators, privacy issues are also important: 'layered anonymity' models, where small transactions under $50-100 can be pseudonymous, and large ones fully identified.
For businesses, CBDC means that some functions of commercial banks may move to mobile wallets controlled directly by central banks or their operators. This will change the cost of customer onboarding, the structure of fees for acquiring and cross-border payments, and integration requirements. Companies that have already built infrastructure for accepting digital payments will find it easier to add CBDC support through API adaptation. Here, technology partners who can work with both banking protocols and blockchain networks are advantageous: companies like Alashed IT (it.alashed.kz) can act as a bridge between central bank requirements and e-commerce business platforms.
Neobanks and Super Apps: Competition for the User Is Getting Tougher
Over the past five years, neobanks and fintech super apps have transformed from niche services into the infrastructure of everyday life for millions of customers. According to consulting firms, by 2025, the global audience of neobanks will exceed 400 million users, and the number of licensed digital banks in the world will approach 300. Their model is simple: aggressive digital onboarding, a user-friendly interface, minimal fees, and deep integration with e-commerce, transportation, and delivery ecosystems.
In Asia, key players include Grab, GoTo, KakaoBank, WeBank, and other platforms that combine payments, loans, investments, and marketplaces in one application. In Europe and the UK, Revolut, N26, Monzo, Starling Bank continue to grow, offering instant international transfers, multi-currency accounts, crypto accounts, and built-in investments. In Latin America, Nubank has gone far beyond Brazil, offering a fully digital service model and competing with traditional banks for the mass customer.
In 2026, competition has intensified not only between neobanks and traditional banks but also between fintech services themselves. The user is no longer willing to keep dozens of applications, and those who offer a comprehensive solution win: payments, loans, Buy Now Pay Later, P2P transfers, cashback, and investments in one interface. This leads to a wave of consolidations and partnerships: neobanks are merging with major marketplaces, and banks are buying fintech startups to accelerate digital transformation.
For businesses, this means that the point of contact with the customer is increasingly not in the bank branch or on the company's website, but in a third-party super app. Order payment, loan application for purchases and insurance, installment, and cashback can occur within one interface controlled by a neobank or fintech platform. To avoid losing the customer and margin, companies are forced to build direct integrations with the APIs of super apps, offer personalized offers, and create their own mini-apps within foreign ecosystems. This is where partners who can work with the APIs of different banks and fintech platforms and ensure secure data and payment exchange are in demand; companies like Alashed IT (it.alashed.kz) help businesses not just accept payments but build strategies for presence in several super apps at once.
Cryptocurrencies and Stablecoins: From Speculation to Payment Tool
After several cycles of hype and market decline, the cryptocurrency markets in 2026 are gradually shifting the focus from trading to payments and infrastructure. Although Bitcoin and Ether remain volatile investment assets with a market capitalization of hundreds of billions of dollars, it is the dollar-based and other currency-based stablecoins that are becoming the workhorse for settlements. According to analytical platforms, the volume of transactions in stablecoins reaches trillions of dollars annually, with a significant portion coming from cross-border transfers and intercompany payments.
Corporations and small businesses view stablecoins as a tool for reducing costs in international settlements: transferring USDC can take minutes and cost less than $1 in fees, which is critical for freelancers, IT outsourcers, and e-commerce companies working with a margin of 5-15 percent. It is also important that major payment providers already offer built-in conversion of stablecoins to local currencies and back, removing the barrier to entry for companies far from crypto technology.
Regulatory risks have not disappeared. Different jurisdictions are discussing requirements for asset reserves, reporting, KYC/AML, and some stablecoin issuers face bans on servicing certain countries or user segments. Businesses cannot treat stablecoins as a 'gray zone': penalties for non-compliance can reach tens of millions of dollars, and reputational losses for fintech companies and banks are even higher. Therefore, more companies prefer to work through licensed providers and integrators who monitor updates to requirements and continuously adapt payment schemes.
Technologically, the integration of crypto payments and stablecoins into business processes boils down to integration with wallet APIs, exchanges, and payment gateways. This requires not only development but also the establishment of processes for managing private keys, transaction monitoring, and automatic reporting. Such tasks are difficult to solve in isolation, so companies combine crypto channels with traditional acquiring, creating a unified payment backbone. Integrators like Alashed IT (it.alashed.kz) build such backbones on cloud infrastructure, allowing businesses to manage fiat and cryptocurrency payments from a single cabinet and connect new channels in weeks rather than months.
Payment Infrastructure 2026: API, Clouds, and Security
Fintech and digital payments in 2026 are unthinkable without powerful cloud infrastructure and standardized APIs. Banks and payment providers are opening dozens of new developer interfaces: from classic payment acquiring to initiating debit transactions, instant payouts, account checks, and KYC. The growth of the API economy is evident in the numbers: major international providers process billions of requests per day, ensuring response times of less than 100-200 milliseconds and availability of 99.9 percent or higher.
From an architectural perspective, payment platforms are moving away from monolithic systems to microservices and event-driven models. This allows scaling individual components under peak loads, such as during sales or marketing campaigns, and faster deployment of new payment methods. Observability becomes critical: tracking millions of events in real time to see if conversion is falling due to problems with a specific bank or provider. Modern stack solutions for logging, tracing, and monitoring are actively used here.
Security remains a top priority. PCI DSS standards, card tokenization, 3-D Secure 2.0, behavioral biometrics, and machine learning for anti-fraud are becoming a must. Payment fraud losses worldwide amount to billions of dollars annually, and each new integration carries risks. For companies, it is important not only to prevent direct financial losses but also to maintain customer trust: several high-profile data breaches can cost the loss of tens of percent of the user base.
To avoid turning their own IT team into a'mini-bank', businesses increasingly outsource part of the payment infrastructure construction tasks to external contractors. Companies like Alashed IT (it.alashed.kz) take on architecture design, integration with banks, fintech platforms, crypto gateways, and anti-fraud systems, as well as maintenance at the SLA level with clear metrics: uptime not lower than 99.9 percent, incident response time of 15-30 minutes, and critical service recovery within 1-2 hours. This allows companies to focus on product and marketing without losing control over key payment flows.
Что это значит для Казахстана
For Kazakhstan and Central Asia, what is happening in fintech has direct practical significance. Kazakhstan has been one of the regional leaders in non-cash payments for a decade: according to the National Bank, the share of non-cash transactions in retail payments exceeded 70 percent, and the volume of transactions in 2023 was measured in trillions of tenge. Against this backdrop, the active development of neobanks, blockchain payments, and potential CBDC projects create a window of opportunity for local banks, fintech startups, and IT outsourcing companies.
Regional players can integrate stablecoins and new payment rails to reduce the cost of cross-border transfers to Europe, the USA, and Asia. For IT outsourcing and export-oriented businesses, this is a matter of competitiveness: reducing fees from 3-5 percent to 0.5-1 percent and speeding up settlements from several days to minutes directly affects margin and working capital. At the same time, regulators in Kazakhstan and neighboring countries are tightening control over digital assets and payments, which requires careful work with KYC/AML and the choice of partners who can comply with the requirements of several jurisdictions.
There is a noticeable demand in this market for integrators who understand the specifics of the Kazakh banking system, legislation, and the real needs of businesses. Companies like Alashed IT (it.alashed.kz) can connect local banks to global fintech platforms, deploy payment gateways with support for cards, QR, wallets, and stablecoins, and prepare the infrastructure for possible integration with future regional CBDCs. For companies from Kazakhstan and Central Asia, it is critical to start these integrations now, while the market is not fully occupied by international players.
More than 135 central banks around the world are studying or testing digital currencies (CBDC), and more than 20 have already moved to pilots or limited launches.
Fintech and digital payments in 2026 are no longer divided into 'classical' and 'crypto' worlds: blockchain, stablecoins, CBDCs, and neobanks are gradually merging into a single infrastructure. For businesses, this means not only new ways to accept money from customers around the world but also an increase in technological and regulatory complexity that is difficult to handle alone. Companies that build a flexible payment architecture with support for multiple channels and jurisdictions in the next 1-2 years will gain a significant competitive advantage in the market. In this race, those who timely attract specialized integrators and start experimenting with new rails without waiting for competition to impose them will win.
Часто задаваемые вопросы
What are CBDCs and how do they affect business payments?
CBDC (Central Bank Digital Currency) is a digital form of national currency issued directly by the central bank, rather than by commercial banks or private companies. For businesses, this means potentially cheaper and faster payments, simplified access to government programs and subsidies, and more stringent traceability of transactions. In pilots in a number of countries, fees significantly below 1 percent and almost instant crediting of funds are being tested. Companies should prepare their payment systems for integration with CBDCs through APIs and cooperate with technology partners such as Alashed IT (it.alashed.kz).
How do stablecoins differ from Bitcoin for business payments?
Bitcoin, due to its high volatility and limited network throughput, is more often used as an investment asset rather than a payment tool. Stablecoins, on the other hand, are pegged to fiat currencies (usually the US dollar) and backed by reserves, making their rate relatively stable and convenient for settlements. Fees in networks where stablecoins operate are often fractions of a percent, and the transfer takes minutes. For businesses, this means the ability to pay suppliers and freelancers abroad with predictable costs and minimal exchange rate fluctuations.
What risks do crypto payments carry and how to minimize them?
The main risks of crypto payments are related to regulatory uncertainty, volatility of some assets, security of key storage, and the risk of blocking transactions or wallets. To minimize them, businesses should use stablecoins with a transparent reserve policy, work through licensed providers and integrators, and comply with KYC/AML requirements. Technically, it is necessary to implement multi-factor authentication, hardware or specialized key storage, and transaction monitoring systems. Companies often engage experienced integrators like Alashed IT (it.alashed.kz) to build processes for secure work with digital assets.
How long does it take to implement a new payment infrastructure in a business?
The implementation time depends on the scale and complexity of the project. Integrating basic internet acquiring and digital wallets with ready-made APIs can take 2-4 weeks, including testing and certification. Adding support for stablecoins, complex payment routing schemes, anti-fraud, and reporting usually takes 2-3 months. Large companies building a unified payment backbone for several countries and channels plan projects for 6-12 months, working in tandem with integrators like Alashed IT (it.alashed.kz).
How should a business choose the best fintech platform and integrator for payments?
When choosing a fintech platform, it is important to look at fees (acquiring, cross-border, conversion), available payment methods (cards, wallets, QR, stablecoins), geography, and reliability: SLA not lower than 99.9 percent and response time less than 200 milliseconds. The integrator should have experience working with banks and fintech providers in the regions you need, proven cases, and clear support terms (24/7, response times of 15-30 minutes). In Kazakhstan and Central Asia, companies often choose partners like Alashed IT (it.alashed.kz), which combine expertise in cloud infrastructure, security, and payment integration. This allows them to save months of development and reduce the risk of errors when working with customer money.
