SaaS Pricing in Tenge: How to Price Without Losing on FX

For customers in Kazakhstan, it’s best to price SaaS in tenge and handle currency risk inside the calculation: isolate the dollar portion of your costs, add a buffer for exchange rate growth over the price lock-in period, and write down a review rule. At the same time, the product accepts payment the ways customers are used to: Kaspi, cards with recurring billing, and invoices to LLPs with a certificate of completed work and a VAT invoice.

This article is for SaaS founders and product teams who sell in Kazakhstan and pay for infrastructure, AI models and tools in dollars. We cover pricing models, a formula with variables, payment methods, customer approval thresholds and when it’s time to raise prices. There are deliberately no specific exchange rates or market prices here: the calculation should work with your own numbers.

Why dollar pricing hurts sales in Kazakhstan

A dollar price is convenient for the seller and inconvenient for the buyer. For a small business owner, an amount in dollars requires conversion and creates a feeling that the price could go up at any moment. For accounting, it’s an expense on a foreign service that can’t be documented to local standards. For the CFO, it’s a separate approval for a foreign-currency corporate card payment.

Each of these barriers lengthens the deal. As a result, a product that wins on features loses to a local competitor with a price in tenge and clear documents.

There’s one exception: IT companies that already pay for dozens of foreign services in dollars. For them, dollar pricing is familiar. But even in this segment, the seller having a local legal entity and proper closing documents becomes an argument in the decision.

Where currency risk comes from

Currency risk arises when revenue is in tenge but part of the costs is in dollars. For a Kazakhstan SaaS, dollar costs typically include:

• cloud infrastructure from a foreign provider;
• AI model APIs, billed by request volume;
• team tools: task tracker, CRM, email, design, monitoring (for example, Jira and Plane charge per user in dollars);
• payment and SMS services, if they are foreign;
• licenses for third-party components inside the product.

Tenge costs: salaries, office, local hosting, taxes, marketing in local channels. If the product is hosted with a provider in Kazakhstan, part of the infrastructure moves to the tenge side, and the risk goes down.

The first step is simple: split your per-customer cost into two columns, dollars and tenge. In our experience, many teams do this for the first time, and the dollar share turns out to be larger than they expected.

Pricing models in tenge

Model	How it works	Seller’s currency risk	Best for
Fixed price in tenge	Price in tenge, reviewed by a rule, for example once a year	High between reviews	Small businesses, simple plans, low dollar share
Tenge price with a band	Price is fixed while the rate stays in the band, recalculated with notice outside it	Limited by the band	Mid-sized businesses, annual contracts
Price in conventional units	Price in dollars, paid in tenge at the National Bank rate on the invoice date	Almost none	Large contracts, high dollar share
Hybrid: subscription plus usage	Base subscription in tenge, the variable part for volume (e.g., AI requests) is recalculated	Only on the variable part	Products with AI and expensive external APIs
Annual prepayment in tenge	Discount for paying a year ahead, price locked for the term	High for the whole year, but cash is received up front	Customers with annual budgets, low-churn products

In practice, models are combined. For example, a fixed tenge price on the website for small businesses and a contract with a band for corporate clients.

How to choose a model for your product. Answer three questions. What share of costs is in dollars? For how long does the customer want to lock in the price? Who makes the purchase decision, the business owner or a procurement department? A small business owner chooses simplicity, so a fixed price works for them. A procurement department chooses predictability and documents, so a contract with a band and a clear recalculation rule works there. Keep the conventional-units model for cases where, without it, the product goes into the red with every noticeable move in the exchange rate.

Calculating the price with variables

Below is the formula we use during the diagnostic. Plug in your own values.

Variable	What it means	Where to get it
C_usd	Dollar cost per customer per month	Provider invoices divided by the number of customers or by unit of usage
C_kzt	Tenge cost per customer per month	Salaries, hosting in Kazakhstan, support, allocated per customer
K	Tenge-to-dollar exchange rate in your budget	The current National Bank rate on the calculation date
D	Buffer for exchange rate growth over the price lock-in period	Your call: depends on the lock-in period and risk tolerance
M	Target gross margin	The product’s financial model

Price in tenge:

P = (C_usd × K × (1 + D) + C_kzt) / (1 − M)

Sensitivity check. Let the dollar share of costs be d, and the exchange rate rise x percent above the built-in buffer. Then costs will rise by roughly d × x percent. If the dollar share is half and the rate moves 10 percent above the estimate, costs will rise by about 5 percent, and the margin in absolute terms shrinks by exactly that amount. Calculate at what x the margin falls below the acceptable level. That is the band boundary for the contract.

What to do with the result:

1. If d is small, a fixed tenge price is safe, and an annual review is enough.
2. If d is large, move the dollar portion into a variable price component or use a band.
3. If the product makes heavy use of AI, separate usage from the subscription. Otherwise your most active customers will become unprofitable at any exchange rate.

How to accept payment: Kaspi, cards, invoices to LLPs

The payment method affects conversion as much as the price does. Customers should be able to pay the way they’re used to paying other suppliers.

Method	Best for	Documents	Notes
Kaspi	Sole proprietors, small businesses, individuals	Receipt, invoice if needed	The familiar method for small businesses; check connection terms with the bank
Card via a payment provider	Subscriptions with monthly billing	Receipt, certificate of completed work on request	Requires recurring payments and failed-charge handling
Invoice for an LLP	Medium and large businesses	Contract, certificate of completed work, electronic VAT invoice if VAT applies	Long cycle, but stable payment and annual contracts

Kazakhstan context. A corporate client expects a contract with a Kazakhstan legal entity, a certificate of completed work and an electronic VAT invoice through the ESF system if the seller is a VAT payer. Foreign SaaS vendors don’t provide this and invoice in dollars for card payment, so the seller’s local LLP becomes a competitive advantage. Check the VAT rate and the registration threshold with your accountant. On the website price list, state clearly whether VAT is included in the price.

Recurring card billing requires separate work: a reminder before the charge, a retry on failure and an easy way to change the card. Without this, part of your churn will be technical rather than related to the product’s value.

Approval thresholds and how to present the price

In B2B, thresholds are determined less by how a number is perceived and more by the customer’s purchasing procedure. The ladder usually looks like this:

• an employee pays themselves and doesn’t need approval;
• a department head approves payment within their own budget;
• the director’s signature and a contract are required;
• a procurement procedure is required.

Each step lengthens the deal. The specific amounts vary from company to company. Find them out in customer interviews: ask who signs off on a purchase of that size and how long it takes. If your main plan is just above the threshold at which the customer needs the director, lowering the price to the threshold may bring in more revenue than a discount elsewhere.

For small businesses, familiar techniques work: round amounts in tenge are easier to remember, and an annual price shown as a monthly one reduces the sense of a big purchase. Show the monthly price and the annual total side by side, so there’s no feeling of a hidden charge.

It’s useful to test the price as a hypothesis before launch. We described methods in our article on how to validate demand for an IT product before development: a landing page with a price and pre-orders give a signal earlier than the first sales.

How to show the price on your website

A pricing page for a customer in Kazakhstan answers four questions: how much it costs in tenge, whether VAT is included, how to pay and what will happen to the price later. If even one of them goes unanswered, the customer leaves with a question for a sales rep or for a competitor.

What to include:

• the monthly price in tenge and the total for annual billing side by side;
• a “VAT included” or “VAT excluded” note;
• payment methods: Kaspi, card, invoice for legal entities;
• plan limits, especially on AI and storage usage;
• the price review rule for contracts, if you use a band;
• a contact for corporate inquiries, ideally with WhatsApp.

Don’t hide the price behind a “Request a quote” button if the product is sold to small businesses. For this segment, an open price in tenge removes some objections on its own. For corporate clients, you can show a base plan and keep custom quotes for large implementations.

When and how to raise prices

Reasons to raise prices:

1. The exchange rate moved outside the built-in band, and the margin dropped below the acceptable level.
2. Costs went up: new AI features, more expensive infrastructure, moving hosting to Kazakhstan.
3. The product gained noticeable new value that customers use.
4. New customers buy without pushing back on price, and deals close faster than before.

How to do it:

• notify existing customers in advance and explain the reason without making excuses;
• offer to lock in the current price through annual prepayment before the increase date;
• you can keep the price for long-standing customers for a limited time, but not forever;
• raise prices for new customers first and watch conversion.

Don’t raise prices at the same time as a major product change. Customers will associate the price increase with the hassle of moving to the new version.

Common mistakes

• The price is copied from a foreign competitor and converted at the current rate without accounting for local purchasing power and the dollar share of costs.
• AI features are included in a fixed subscription with no limits.
• There’s no price review rule, so every increase becomes a negotiation.
• The website doesn’t say whether VAT is included.
• Corporate clients are offered card payment only.
• Annual prepayment is sold at a discount that doesn’t cover a year of currency risk.

We covered how pricing relates to sales channels and product stage in our piece on GTM for SaaS in Kazakhstan.

How we do it

We start with a diagnostic: we split costs into dollar and tenge parts and look at customer segments, their purchasing procedures and current payment methods. Then we test the new pricing model on one segment, for example new small business customers, and only after that move the others over and update contracts.

If you’re revisiting your prices or preparing a SaaS launch in Kazakhstan, see how our GTM for IT products service works: pricing is part of the work on positioning and channels.

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Sources. Examples of dollar pricing for team tools: Jira price list and Plane pricing. Vendor prices change, so check the current pages.

Terms in plain words

Currency risk

The risk of losing profit when revenue is in tenge but part of the expenses is in dollars. When the dollar rises, expenses grow while the customer’s price stays the same.

Gross margin

The share of the price that remains after the direct costs of serving the customer. Currency risk eats into it first.

Exchange rate band

A range of exchange rates within which the contract price doesn’t change. If the rate moves outside it, the price is recalculated and the customer is notified.

Conventional units

The price is set in dollars, and the customer pays in tenge at the National Bank rate on the invoice date. It protects the seller, but makes budgeting harder for the customer.

Recurring payments

Automatic regular charges to a customer’s card, for example a monthly subscription charge. They require reminders and retries when a charge fails.

ESF (electronic VAT invoice)

A VAT tax document that in Kazakhstan is issued through the government ESF system. Corporate clients expect one from a supplier that is a VAT payer.

API

The way one program communicates with another. AI model APIs are usually billed in dollars by request volume, which creates direct currency risk.

Churn

Customers who stopped paying and left. Some churn is technical: for example, a card charge failed even though the customer didn’t intend to leave.