Kazakh major banks are turning to online currency conversions – study

As of August this year one dollar the Kazakh tenge was 386.67 to the dollar, up by 8.5% compared to the same period of 2018 (356.54 tenge), resulting in a 60.3% rise in net sales of United States currency within the year, to 1.3 trillion tenge. A year ago the net sales stood at 800 billion tenge. Sales of dollars peaked in June this year at 384.2 billion tenge.

Net sales of euros also observed the 49.4% year-on-year rise, totalling at 247.4 billion tenge (a year ago – 165.6 billion tenge).

However, the net sales of Russian ruble declined by 13.6% within the year from 494.1 billion to 426.7 billion tenge in January-August of 2019.

The second-tier banks still own most of exchange offices, with 65.8% of the total exchange offices or 1.7 thousand, whereas legal entities own 34.2% or 905 exchange offices.

The report said that the total amount of funds of legal entities’ accounts in second-tier banks was 3.6 trillion tenge by the end of August, increasing by 4.5% over the same period of last year (3.5 trillion tenge).

More than half of the funds are held in foreign currency – 1.9 trillion tenge, or 52.9%, demonstrating an 8.3% year-on-year increase.

Currency conversion through traditional exchange offices may no longer be necessary as Kazakh major banks are switching to online currency conversions. So businesses could enjoy mobility and convenience when carrying out currency operations.

Photo: open sources