When ecosystems work well, there’s balance, harmony and mutual growth. When they don’t, there’s tension, disunity and stagnation. No one understands that better than Renat Tukanov, Group Chief Technology Officer for Freedom Holding Corp (FRHC), who says his job is to build bridges between people as much as between machines; to promote not just digital integration, but also cultural coalescence. “Why do projects fail? It’s all about the culture,” says Tukanov. “Eventually, the challenge is not to build the technical part, but to build the human part to make people communicate with each other, work with each other.” Freedom Holding Corp is the financial services group built by Timur Turlov. Born in Russia, his business career and the growth of FHRC have been defined by its expansion across Central Asia, and later in Europe and the US. He transformed a small brokerage operation into a diversified international ecosystem listed in the US on Nasdaq. By the time FRHC began attracting global attention, Turlov was already leading a sizeable fintech empire spanning more than 20 countries, anchored by the largest business in Kazakhstan – the country that would
become the group’s strategic market and has become Turlov’s home. He hadn’t been born into privilege, and Turlov’s path to becoming a multi-billionaire, now leading the most valuable, non-state-owned company in the largest of the so-called Central Asian ‘Stans’, wasn’t linear. But in amassing brokerage, banking, insurance, telecoms and ecommerce companies under FHRC, operating more than 20 businesses in 22 countries, he became expert at building ecosystems, both inside and out. Perhaps the best example of that is the Freedom SuperApp launched by the Corp’s Freedom Bank in Kazakhstan in April 2024. As of October 2025, it had 1.6 million active monthly users and was the most downloaded app that year. “The Freedom SuperApp is one of the key activators of the ecosystem,” says Tukanov. “It collects a customer’s fragmented digital experiences into one. So you don’t have to keep in your memory ‘what was the account, what was the password?’. In that way, there is less decision fatigue.” It demonstrates what Freedom’s founder believes is the inevitable convergence between banking and telecoms. In this symbiotic relationship, the former has the advantage of long customer retention cycles while the latter enjoys low acquisition costs.
Each benefits from keeping customers in the same ecosystem, which is ultimately defined, says Turlov, as ‘a true set of rails for communication between people’. The Freedom SuperApp brings together the services its banking customers use multiple times a day, such as payments, with others that are less frequently accessed (brokerage, investments, insurance). It also plugs users into the largest online grocery platform in Kazakhstan, Arbuz.kz, which is owned by Freedom; Freedom Ticketon, its ticketing platform; and its flight aggregator, Aviata. And all these can be accessed via one login, with payment credentials automatically and securely retrieved, while permissioned integrations with government departments allow for one-click ID checks. Turlov told an audience in Dubai in December 2025 that a financial ecosystem is more powerful than individual products. But it relies, of course, on a technology infrastructure that can handle the data calls. And it’s an advantage if you also have control over that architecture. In Kazakhstan, at least, Freedom does. Through Freedom Telecom, the Group is expanding Freedom Cloud Kazakhstan to improve the nation’s digital sovereignty to support
Renat Tukanov, Group Chief Technology Officer for Freedom Holding Corp & CEO Freedom Finance Global
Smart moves ECOSYSTEMS
2026 looks to be a key year for Freedom Holding Corp, a global fintech conglomerate with major presence in Kazakhstan that’s betting big on banking ecosystems 8 THEPAYTECHMAGAZINE ISSUE 18
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