Photo: Meruyert Gonullu / Pexels
An ONAY outage in Almaty on the morning of 9 November left passengers unable to pay their fares: QR codes would not load in the app. The metro’s press office said QR payments were unavailable at all stations from 06:30 to 09:30 (tengrinews.kz).
What happened
Queues formed at stations. Passengers complained that they were late for work and classes. ONAY had not responded to Tengrinews’ request by the time the news report was published at 10:31.
The metro continued to accept transport and bank cards, Apple Pay, Samsung Pay and paper QR tickets. Passengers could use these to pass through the turnstiles during the outage.
Who owns ONAY
The system is run by Transport Holding of Almaty LLP. As of 7 February 2026, its shareholders were Onay Solution LLP and Sadir Khamraev. Their stakes were not disclosed (forbes.kz).
Onay Solution is owned by Ilya Kan, Vitaly Kan and Olga Nigay. Ilya is businessman Sergey Kan’s son, and Vitaly is his brother. The ONAY card has been in use since 1 October 2015.
The operator’s commission
The minutes of the city’s tariff commission, published on 14 August 2026, list a 7% commission for the electronic fare payment system operator. The document sets a 9% commission for the second operator (gov.kz).
In 2023, passengers paid 31.8 billion tenge in fares through ONAY to 25 transport operators in Almaty. These operators had a total turnover of 106.7 billion tenge, including 69.4 billion in government subsidies (bes.media).
There’s an important detail here: the 31.8 billion tenge was the transport operators’ fare revenue. It shows the volume of payments processed through ONAY, but on its own says nothing about the system operator’s earnings.
What this means for passengers
If the ONAY app fails to load a QR code again, passengers can use a bank or transport card on the metro. They can also pay with Apple Pay, Samsung Pay or a paper QR ticket: these methods worked on the morning of 9 November.
Since 29 December 2025, passengers have also been able to pay fares through the Kaspi app by scanning an ONAY QR code. Since 4 March 2026, the Avtobys system, run by Innoforce holding, has been available on seven bus routes in Almaty (vlast.kz).
In March, the city administration said ONAY and Avtobys would operate alongside each other. At the time, city officials had no plans to stop using ONAY.
