The central banks of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Azerbaijan have agreed to work out a mechanism for linking their national QR payment systems by the end of 2026. The plan concerns how the systems could work together across borders; it does not mean that an integrated service is already available.
The proposal was supported at a regional meeting of the five monetary authorities in Tajikistan on 22–23 October. Their agreed work programme sets a target for developing an interoperability mechanism, rather than announcing the launch of cross-border payments for customers.
The intended outcome is for travellers to pay merchants in participating countries through the domestic banking app they already use. Real-time cross-border transfers are also envisaged, extending the proposed arrangement beyond purchases to payments moving between countries.
A shared mechanism, not a live service
At the centre of the plan is interoperability: enabling separate national QR payment systems to work together. The authorities have endorsed development work towards that aim, but delivery, governance and the technical arrangements needed to connect the systems remain to be established.
The end-of-2026 target applies to working out the mechanism. It should not be read as a confirmed date by which travellers will be able to use their apps abroad. The distinction is important because an agreed approach and an operational payment service are different stages of the project.
For a traveller, the proposed experience would centre on an existing domestic bank app being usable for merchant payments in another participating country. That is the customer use envisaged by the authorities, not a capability that the agreement itself has already put in place.
The transfer element is similarly prospective. Real-time cross-border transfers form part of the intended scope, but the work plan does not establish that those transfers are now operating across the five countries. Both purchases and transfers depend on the interoperability arrangements still to be developed.
Wider payment discussions
The meeting also covered instant-payment platforms and remote identification. These discussions placed the QR proposal within a broader exchange on digital payments, rather than treating it as the only issue facing the participating monetary authorities.
Payment-infrastructure security and fraud prevention were also on the agenda. They were subjects of discussion alongside the proposed cross-border connection, but the agreement does not establish that a common security or fraud-prevention framework has been completed.
Officials also discussed digital-asset regulation and the use of artificial intelligence in supervision. Those topics formed part of the wider meeting; they should not be confused with features of the proposed QR payment arrangement or treated as separate policy changes already adopted.
Kazakhstan presented its domestic interbank mobile payment system and related digital-finance infrastructure during the exchange. That presentation concerned its national arrangements. It was not an announcement that the domestic system had already been connected to those of the other four countries.
What remains to be established
The immediate development is therefore a five-country agreement to work on a shared mechanism. The countries have identified a proposed direction for their national payment systems, while the practical question of how those systems will operate together remains open.
The plan has a defined purpose: enabling banking-app payments to merchants across participating borders, with real-time transfers also envisaged. It also has a defined development target, the end of 2026. Neither establishes consumer availability or indicates how widely any eventual service would be used.
For now, the commitment is to the work needed to make interoperability possible. The proposed customer uses remain ambitions of that programme, rather than completed outcomes.
