Kaspi.kz to bid in privatization of Uzbekistan's Humo payments system

ASTANA. Aug 27 (Interfax) - Kazakh fintech group Kaspi.kz has submitted a formal letter of interest to Uzbekistan's State Assets Management Agency (SAMA) to participate in the privatization of the Humo payments system, Kaspi.kz said in a Tuesday press release.

SAMA has unveiled plans to privatize a 100% stake in the Humo payment system via a public negotiation process.

Humo is one of two payment systems in Uzbekistan and enables all aspects of the payments process for banks and other payment providers. According to SAMA, it has issued over 23 million Humo cards, connected over 200,000 points of sale and installed around 6,000 ATMs.

"Uzbekistan's economy is growing fast, and I believe the country is taking all the right steps to increase its attractiveness to investors and companies like Kaspi.kz. Our shareholders include the likes of Fidelity, BlackRock , Capital International and Baillie Gifford and are amongst the world's most respected investors in technology companies. We want to give them a front row seat to Uzbekistan's rapidly unfolding transformation," Mikheil Lomtadze, CEO and co-founder of Kaspi.kz, is quoted as saying.

The privatization is expected to proceed in three stages: expression of interest, collection of non-binding proposals and collection of binding proposals. At the final stage, bidders must submit a guarantee payment amounting to at least 1% of their proposed binding price offer, according to the press release.

Kaspi.kz operates a two-sided Super App business model: the Kaspi.kz Super App for consumers and the Kaspi Pay Super App for merchants and entrepreneurs. Kaspi.kz's offerings include payments, marketplace and fintech solutions for both consumers and merchants. Kaspi.kz Group is comprised of Kaspi Shop LLP, Kaspi Bank, Kaspi Pay LLP and Kaspi Travel LLP. As at July 1, 2024 the company's main shareholders were Baring Funds (24.24%), Mikheil Lomtadze (21.53%) and Vyacheslav Kim (20.39%).

In January 2024, Kaspi.kz conducted an IPO on the Nasdaq, raising $1.04 billion through sales by Kim, Lomtadze, and Asia Equity Partners Limited (a Baring Vostok fund). Subsequently, the company was delisted from the London Stock Exchange, where it had traded since October 2020.