Payment methods in Kyrgyzstan

The market

Kyrgyzstan is a small card market that settles in soms: Visa and Mastercard cover domestic and foreign cards, and Elcart, the domestic scheme run with the National Bank, covers the cards of the local banks’ clients, which matters for salaries and pensions paid to those cards. Card payments settle at T+1 through the acquiring bank, with chargebacks under the scheme rules. Local wallets and account transfers exist, but they are not in the catalogue yet, so the checkout in the catalogue is a card form. The National Bank of the Kyrgyz Republic licenses payment organisations and payment system operators and oversees the banks that acquire cards.

How Tranzify clients launch

Kyrgyzstan is in the catalogue on request, and no provider is listed for it yet: a client brings the Kyrgyz acquiring bank or payment organisation it has a contract with, and the integration is built into the catalogue as a connector on that request. From then on the usual mechanics apply: routing by BIN and scheme sends Elcart cards to the route that takes them and Visa and Mastercard to the acquirer, a decline cascades to a second acquirer if the client has one, and every payment is journaled for five years with the final status delivered by webhook. The licence stays with the client and its bank; Tranzify supplies the software and the integration.

Elcart cards

Elcart is the domestic card scheme of Kyrgyzstan; its cards are issued by the local banks and accepted by the local acquirers, and in the catalogue the scheme carries deposits and refunds and settles at T+1. A client offers it next to Visa and Mastercard and lets the BIN decide the route, so a payer never has to pick a scheme by hand.