National Bank of Kazakhstan sells its first tokenised notes on KASE

The National Bank of Kazakhstan sold its first tokenised short-term notes on 9 November, placing KZT 10 billion of a KZT 50 billion, 91-day issue on the Kazakhstan Stock Exchange's digital asset platform, the central bank said.

The auction sold one issue in two forms at the same time and at the same price: conventional notes recorded at the Central Securities Depository and digital notes recorded on the exchange's new platform. That let the central bank test the digital register against the existing one without creating a separate issue. The National Bank said the placement lays a basis for wider use of tokenisation in the government securities market.

Investors bid KZT 70.2 billion at face value, 1.4 times the amount on offer. The National Bank placed the whole issue at a weighted average yield of 15.72 per cent.

Four participants took part and three had their bids filled, the exchange's results notice shows. The tokenised line took 100 million of the 500 million notes sold, a fifth of the issue.

The notes are discount paper, so the cash paid was below face value: buyers paid KZT 48.11 billion for notes with a face value of KZT 50 billion.

Of that sum, KZT 9.62 billion paid for the tokenised notes and KZT 38.49 billion for the 400 million notes in conventional form.

Pricing was tight. Accepted bids ran from a yield of 15.65 per cent to 15.74 per cent, a spread of nine basis points across the four bids that were filled.

One issue with two registers

Both lines share one ISIN. The conventional notes trade under the code NTK091_2892 and the digital notes under 1DNT912892. The digital notes are issued as financial instruments in electronic digital form, with holders' rights kept in the exchange's register and reflected in the depository's records, the exchange said in its announcement of the auction. The KASE Clearing Center clears and settles trades in them. The exchange said in its results notice that the rules for the hybrid auction, including for instruments in electronic digital form under the special regulatory regime, would be published shortly.

The exchange set a minimum bid of 50,000 notes for the digital line. Settlement took place on 11 November, two days after the auction, and the notes mature on 10 February 2027.

Rules in force since May

The legal framework for issuing and trading digital financial assets has applied in Kazakhstan since 1 May 2026, the National Bank said. KASE was the first company the central bank registered as the operator of a digital financial asset platform and of a digital asset trading platform.

The exchange presented the platform in June in the presence of Timur Suleimenov, the National Bank's chairman. The concept set out then was for digital notes to be placed first among second-tier banks and then to circulate on the platform, with settlement, income payments and redemption on one system. Adil Mukhamedzhanov, chairman of the KASE management board, said at the time that the expected effects included wider access for non-residents, settlement on the day of the trade and round-the-clock operation.

Government bonds come next

Suleimenov told the 14th Congress of Financiers in Almaty on 13 November: "We plan to issue tokenized government bonds jointly with the Ministry of Finance in the near future." He added: "This will probably take place in the first quarter of next year," The Astana Times reported. It also reported that KASE hosted the first issue of digital financial assets by private issuers on 27 October.

For the banks that hold National Bank notes as liquidity, the digital line changes the record and the settlement route, not the price or the maturity. The notes went to market after the central bank's October base rate cut and in a month when government bond trading on KASE halved. A ministry bond in tokenised form would carry the same test into the larger government debt market.