Veon Ltd. (NASDAQ: VEON) announced that its VEON Digital Financial Group unit and Beeline Kazakhstan have signed a Memorandum of Cooperation with the National Bank of Kazakhstan to explore the development of digital payment services in the country.

The memorandum establishes a five-year framework for cooperation, including exploring how Veon's digital services could connect with Kazakhstan's national payment and digital financial infrastructure. Areas of potential cooperation include payment and money transfer processing, as well as settlement between financial market participants using services and infrastructure offered by the National Payment Corporation.

The memorandum was signed at the Central Asia Fintech Summit in Almaty, hosted by the National Bank of Kazakhstan, the National Payment Corporation and the Kazakhstan Fintech Network.

Beeline Kazakhstan also stated its intention to pursue first-category payment organization status to support the expansion of its payment services, subject to applicable regulatory requirements and required approvals.

"Payments are an essential part of how customers engage with digital services every day," said Ahmet Kayhan, Chief Payments & Digital Assets Officer of Veon. "This memorandum provides a framework to explore how we can combine those capabilities with Kazakhstan's national payments infrastructure."

Veon noted that the memorandum establishes a framework for cooperation only and does not authorize the launch of new financial services. Any resulting projects will be subject to regulatory, legal and technical review and will proceed only after all required approvals are completed.

Beeline Kazakhstan, majority-owned by Veon, serves 11.7 million mobile customers. Veon operates across five countries with over 150 million connectivity users.