Almaty – Kazakhstan’s Halyk Bank has announced it will acquire a 49% stake in Uzbek digital payments company Click for $176.4 million, marking one of the largest cross-border banking investments in Central Asia to date.
The deal values Click at approximately $360 million, highlighting the growing importance of digital finance in the region’s rapidly evolving financial landscape. With over 20 million customers, Click is one of Uzbekistan’s most widely used payment providers.
As part of the agreement, Click will also take a 49% stake in Tenge Bank, Halyk’s Uzbek subsidiary, for $60.76 million. The reciprocal structure of the deal is designed to foster tighter operational integration and shared technological infrastructure between the two institutions – a significant step toward regional financial harmonization.
“This is a historic moment for Click. Partnering with Halyk Bank and expanding our capabilities through Tenge Bank represents a major step forward in delivering world-class digital financial services to millions of users,” said Ulugbek Rustamov, CEO of Click. “At the same time, the structure of the deal ensures Click retains its independence, continues to shape its strategic vision, and remains a proud national brand.”
Strategic Push Toward Integration
The announcement comes as both Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan continue efforts to modernize their financial systems and ease cross-border payments. Regional trade between the two nations has grown steadily in recent years, with bilateral trade turnover reaching $4.22 billion in 2024, up from $2.9 billion in 2020.
Halyk Bank, already Kazakhstan’s dominant financial institution with a 29% market share and more than 10.9 million active retail clients, views the investment as a strategic step towards capturing Uzbekistan’s booming digital economy. Click, meanwhile, gains regulatory grounding via Tenge Bank and access to Halyk’s technology and ability to raise capital from its public listing on the London Stock Exchange.
Uzbekistan, whose GDP grew by 7.2% in the first half of 2025, continues to open its financial sector to foreign capital – a key pillar of President Shavkat Mirziyoyev’s economic reform program.
Competing Power Structures?
This fintech alliance also throws an intriguing light on Central Asia’s most influential business families. Halyk Bank is majority-owned by Timur Kulibayev and his wife Dinara, the daughter of former Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev, widely viewed as Kazakhstan’s most powerful couple.
Their expanding presence in Uzbekistan via Click and Tenge Bank may once have had the potential to ruffle feathers amongst Uzbekistan’s elite. The fact that the deal has been allowed to proceed this far is in itself an acknowledgement of the shared interests of regional powerbrokers.
A Shift in Regional Strategy
The deal represents a strategic reversal for Halyk Bank. In recent years, the bank has divested from its Kyrgyz and Tajik operations, selling 100% of its Kyrgyz subsidiary to oligarch Aidan Karibzhanov in 2024 and liquidating its Tajik entity in 2022. The Click acquisition signals a renewed focus on Uzbekistan, with the potential to make the country Halyk’s primary external growth market.
This renewed push comes as Halyk cements its dominance in Kazakhstan, where it controls nearly one-third of all banking assets and processes 90% of its retail loans through digital channels, including via its popular Halyk Super-App.
The Future of Banking in Central Asia
Click’s prominence in Uzbekistan’s digital economy, now backed by Halyk’s financial infrastructure, positions the partnership to pioneer a regional payments ecosystem, long hindered by incompatible systems and protectionist government policy.
It represents further evidence of Central Asian integration, which has gathered pace since Mirziyoyev came to power in 2016, and has accelerated since the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The deal comes on the back of Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan signing a joint border agreement earlier in 2025, the establishment of a regional civil aviation authority, and regular summits in the C5+1 format, through which post-Soviet Central Asian states regularly engage with the outside world.
The deal is pending approval by regulators in both countries and is expected to close by the end of 2025. Joint product launches and integrated financial platforms are already under discussion.
This is a developing story…
