NOVEMBER 2024
Building Digital
Public Infrastructure
Lessons Learned from Kazakhstan
By Kati Suominen
Introduction
Digital payments are a critical on-ramp for people around the world to access increasingly digitized
public and private services. In many countries, digital payment use has expanded rapidly over the past
decade—especially in the wake of Covid-19—as consumers and businesses have migrated online and
grown used to the convenience, speed, security, and transparency of paying digitally. Mass adoption
of digital payments has created powerful network eects that enable ubiquitous person-to-person
transactions and dramatically expand the markets for small businesses. The digital payment revolution
has also helped create the nancial technoloy (ntech) and e-commerce revolutions that fuel
consumption and promote income growth.
Countries around the world have promoted digital payments and nancial inclusion through various means,
including through digital public infrastructures (DPIs)—a relatively new term that usually refers to digital
identity, payments, and data exchange systems on which other digital solutions and services can be built,
typically to promote nancial and digital inclusion. In 2023, the G20 envisioned DPIs as “interoperable,
open, and inclusive systems supported by technoloy to provide essential, society-wide, public and private
services” that can play “a critical role in accelerating digital transformation in an inclusive way.”
1
Estimates suggest that over 100 countries—possibly as many as 130—have at least one DPI element
in place; many more are considering DPIs. However, as discussed in a recent paper published by
the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), there remains little knowledge about DPIs’
functioning and impact, for example on digital payment adoption and use, nancial inclusion,
1 According to earlier work by the Nextrade Group and applying a stricter denition, there were 101 DPIs in place. On the 2024 DPI map created by
the Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose, there were 132 identity systems and 156 payment systems across 132 countries; 134 data exchange
systems were studied, but more than half of the systems were not active yet.
