Colvir Helps Kazakhstan to Become the First Country in Central Asia to Migrate to ISO 20022

2025 has started for Kazakhstan’s finance industry with an important event — migration of the banks’ information systems and of the country’s payment system to ISO 20022. Colvir has developed a solution for implementing the new standard for electronic data interchange between financial and trading market participants. Thanks to the banks’ motivation and to the regulator’s competent tactics Kazakhstan became the first of the Central Asia countries to join, together with European Union and South East Asia countries, the ranks of countries that have adopted the new international standard. 

Migration to the ISO 20022 standard is a historically important event for all financial market participants in the Republic of Kazakhstan. A massive amount of work has been carried out by the Kazakhstan National Payment Corporation and by market participants to adapt the national payment systems and the banks’ information systems to the methodology of the new standard. The well-coordinated teamwork of Colvir professionals and the Halyk Bank implementation team has made it possible to complete the project successfully and on time. 

Halyk Bank

The following advantages accrue for the national payment system from the ISO 20022 standard: 

• More comprehensive, structured and detailed data in payment messages.
• Better awareness of remittance details resulting in customer service improvement.
• Improved analytics, stricter compliance and more features designed to prevent fraud.
• The single ISO 20022 standard facilitates end-to-end data processing.
• Effective integration thanks to the use of XML technology.

Colvir Software Solutions is proud to have the opportunity to be part of the global project for the Kazakhstan banking industry development and international integration. The country’s 13 financial institutions have entrusted to us as their vendor the project for ISO 20022 migration. 

Colvir and its employees have helped the Bank in migrating to ISO 20022, by providing their assistance throughout all stages of system modification needed to support the new standard and to integrate the Bank’s internal processes, to perform testing, to  make sure that all processes comply with the new standard, to train the staff, to explain key changes to ensure effective use of ISO 20022; and to provide round-the-clock assistance in order to resolve any issues that may come up in the course of implementation.

Asel Omarbayeva

Leading Treasury Back Office Manager, Altyn Bank JSC

Colvir Software Solutions employees are outstanding professionals and a very closely-knit team whose assistance has made it possible for us to migrate to the new standard without suffering any losses, complaints from our customers or the Bank’s activity interruptions. Migration to the new international message exchange standard has facilitated expanding options available to the country’s financial sector as a whole, domestically, as well as internationally.

Andrey Yazykov

Altyn Bank JSC

The migration of the Kazakhstan national payment system to the ISO 20022 standard enables financial entities to achieve 100% compliance with international data transmission requirements.

Migration to ISO 20022 enables global compatibility between different information and payment systems making use of this methodology. The ISO 20022 standard implementation will raise the effectiveness of interaction between financial institutions and their customers, as well as facilitate easy adaptation to technology changes in the financial market thanks to the use of unified rules and procedures. 

National Bank of Kazakhstan

An all-inclusive implementation approach is needed in order to gain maximum advantages from the ISO 20022 standard and capitalize on those. This is exactly the guiding principle embraced by the Colvir professionals involved in the development of a well-thought-out methodology solution within the Payment System module scope.   

Customers selecting the Colvir solution for ISO 20022 migration have gained a number of advantages:

• Optimized and transparent payment routing functionality.
• Extended payment attribute set.
• Unified interfaces and settlement reconciliation mechanisms.
• Adaptability to changes in the course of subsequent further development.
• Easy seamless migration to the new standard.

Migration to ISO 20022 enables the Bank to comply with regulatory requirements without losing its ability to deliver domestic remittance services to its customers. Our Colvir colleagues have proactively assisted us in migration to the new standard, they were available round the clock and promptly resolved any issues coming up. 

Zarema Mukanova

Forte Bank Head of the Core Banking Team

Colvir would like to congratulate its customers and its partners with the successful migration, as well as to congratulate Kazakhstan with yet another confirmation of its status as the technology leader of Central Asia. Colvir Software Solutions projects for customer migration to ISO 20022 keep unfolding: we are currently working on this in Azerbaijan, Kyrgyzstan, Georgia and Turkmenistan, as well as implementing another large-scale project in Kazakhstan to facilitate settlements in the global Swift network.