Archive · 2026 · From the print edition of Wednesday 30 September 2026, Vol. 34, No. 10,503
BusinessBank of Irad: Tulpar Pay would need a licence it does not have
The currency board says a payment service inside the messaging app falls under the 1993 Act, whatever coin it uses. Tulpar says the bank has already ruled the coin is not money.
TALAS — The Bank of Irad said yesterday that Tulpar Pay, the payment service the messaging app Tulpar plans to run in Tulparcoin from January, would be an unlicensed payment and deposit-taking service under the Banking and Commercial Currency Act of 1993, and that any business taking part could face penalties.
Ermek Sadykbekov, a deputy chairman, said the bank's warning last week that Tulparcoin was not legal tender "does not mean that anyone may take the public's som and dollars in exchange for it without a licence". He said the bank would write to shops advertising themselves as "Tulpar points".
Tulpar Technologies replied in a statement that "by the bank's own words, Tulparcoin is not money, so a service that moves it is not a bank". The company said it had no presence in the ISEZ that the bank could license.
The Lieutenant Governor's office said it supported the bank. Kamran Bekzatov, the president of NurGaz, said in an interview with IradOdin that the coin was "a toy that can burn down a house" and that "a country with a fixed currency and no central bank of its own cannot afford experiments run from Chicago".