The National Bank of Kazakhstan and the country’s Agency for Regulation and Development of the Financial Market (ARDFM) have approved rules formalizing palm-vein biometrics as a regulated authentication modality for banking and payment institutions, effective July 12, 2026. The rules apply to all financial and payment institutions operating in Kazakhstan and mark the first time palm biometrics have been placed on a regulated footing in the country.
The regulations cover palm biometrics incorporating vascular pattern, hand volume, and temperature sensing, alongside existing facial recognition rules. Capture must be handled through secure video channels or certified biometric scanning devices. The rules explicitly prohibit use of a customer’s smartphone for palm verification, requiring specialized hardware or secure in-branch terminals.
Use cases defined in the rules include remote account opening, first-time mobile or web registration, electronic digital signature issuance, loans above a regulatory threshold, and periodic anti-money-laundering customer data updates. Banks and payment institutions will need to deploy compliant capture hardware ahead of the July effective date.
Commercial deployment of palm-vein infrastructure in Kazakhstan has been scaling ahead of the regulatory standard. Kaspi, the country’s largest digital financial services provider, is rolling out Alaqan palm-payment terminals across retail locations nationwide in 2026. Separately, Alaqan Mektep palm-vein biometrics have been adopted in around 140 Kazakh schools for student identification and meal payments.
Palm-vein biometrics use near-infrared imaging to capture the vascular pattern beneath the skin of the palm. The modality is considered difficult to spoof because the vein structure is a subsurface biological feature that cannot be captured from a photograph or from a distance. It has gained traction in payment environments where controlled physical contact with a terminal is acceptable and where the cost of a higher-assurance biometric is justified by transaction value or regulatory requirements.
Other markets have been moving in the same direction. China has seen multiple palm-payment rollouts, including Tencent Cloud’s partnership with Treeal to bring palm recognition payments to Brazil and Saint Deem’s dedicated vein recognition module production line. Kazakhstan’s regulatory framework is among the earliest national-level standards to formalize the modality for mainstream banking.
The rules do not specify a single vendor for the banking deployment; individual banks will select compliant capture hardware from the certified device ecosystem.
Sources: Kursiv
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By the ID Tech Editorial Team
