Kazakhstan's financial regulatory agency promotes the use of local communication applications by businesses.

According to sources familiar with the matter, financial regulatory authorities in Kazakhstan are urging insurance companies and some financial institutions to transfer customer communication platforms to a domestically developed instant messaging application. This is part of a wider initiative to encourage users to move away from foreign alternative applications. The sources said that a major lobbying group in the country's financial sector held a meeting last month with insurance companies and brokers to discuss a letter from financial market regulators. The letter requires the mandatory use of the domestic Aitu application as one of the measures to protect personal data. The sources said that the financial market regulators referred to a directive from the President's office in January in the letter, and stated that only the "banking ecosystem" would be exempt from this proposal.