Accepting payments in Turkey. 6 chapters and a final quiz.

Chapter 1. Choosing your setup: what Turkish law rules out up front.

The first decision isn't which provider to pick. It is which entity in your acceptance chain will hold the Turkish license. Article 4 of the December 1, 2021 regulation on payment services (Resmî Gazete, Turkey's official gazette, No. 31676) reserves the activity for four categories. Three of them are the central bank, banks governed by Law No. 5411, and Posta ve Telgraf Teşkilatı A.Ş., the postal operator. The fourth category drives everything else. It covers institutions incorporated in Turkey and authorized by the central bank. No European passport opens this market. Neither does an offshore license.

Partnering with a foreign entity, and the limits of that route

• Article 19 of the same regulation allows a licensed Turkish institution to serve resident customers jointly with a non-resident legal entity, with the central bank's prior approval.
• The partnership is limited to payment services where at least one party, the sender or the beneficiary, is abroad. When both parties are in Turkey, this route is closed.
• The foreign entity cannot be the sole face of the service. It cannot use its brand in a way that suggests it holds a local license, or open a website targeting resident customers.
• It must be licensed in its home country for payment services or e-money issuance.
• The Turkish institution remains liable to resident customers, and the transactions count toward its guarantee and capital calculations.
• The application includes the contract, a business plan describing the office and staff maintained in Turkey, the complaints-handling procedure, the latest consolidated audit report, and an AML/CFT certificate from the home-country authority.

Chapter 2. Wiring taksit: the field that travels all the way to authorization.

Taksit is chosen at the moment of payment, and the installment count goes out in the authorization request. It is not post-processing. A data model without this field can't sell in Turkey, however good the rest of it is. The omission costs you later, when accounting tries to reconcile settlement spread over 12 months against an order that never recorded how many installments it sold. The integration work comes down to three objects: a versioned grid table, a resolver called on the BIN, and an installment field carried from the checkout screen through to the settlement report.

type TaksitRule = {
  mcc: string;              // merchant business category
  maxInstallments: number;  // 0 = category barred from installments
  amountCapTry?: number;    // above this amount, the plan switches
  maxInstallmentsAbove?: number;
  corporateCards: number;   // separate limit for kurumsal kredi karti (corporate cards)
  effectiveOn: string;      // publication date in the Resmi Gazete
  source: string;           // reference of the BDDK board decision
};

// The grid is set by decision of the BDDK board, after
// consulting the Ministry of Treasury and Finance and the Ministry
// of Trade. It takes effect on publication in the Resmi Gazete.
// So it is always read as of a DATE, never in the absolute.
function allowedInstallments(rules: TaksitRule[], mcc: string,
                             amountTry: number, asOf: string): number {
  const r = rules
    .filter((x) => x.mcc === mcc && x.effectiveOn <= asOf)
    .sort((a, b) => (a.effectiveOn < b.effectiveOn ? 1 : -1))[0];
  if (!r) throw new Error("MCC missing from grid: decline by default");
  if (r.amountCapTry && amountTry > r.amountCapTry) {
    return r.maxInstallmentsAbove ?? 0;
  }
  return r.maxInstallments;
}

• Show the monthly payment, not just the total. Turkish cardholders compare monthly payments across merchants; a checkout that shows only a total price loses that comparison.
• Never show an installment plan the card entered won't get. A grid shown before the BIN is recognized makes promises you can't keep, which means abandoned payments at authorization.
• Log the grid served, with its version and timestamp. Without it, a dispute over an offered installment plan can't be defended six months later.
• Treat a missing MCC as a decline, not as a default approval. Offering a plan the merchant isn't entitled to exposes the acquirer.

Chapter 3. Costing a sale and setting prices under inflation.

In Turkey, the cost of acceptance isn't a single average rate. It depends on how many installments are sold. Every month, the Türkiye Cumhuriyet Merkez Bankası (TCMB) publishes Üye İşyerlerine Uygulanacak Azami Komisyon Oranları, the maximum commission rates that can be charged to merchants. Read it as a time series. Each row has a one-month validity period, and only the current month's row binds your acquirer. Banks are free to charge less. They can't charge more.

The real trade-off: headline rate vs. settlement schedule

Two acquiring offers on the same 12-installment sale can't be compared on their rates. They must be compared after discounting. A low-commission offer settled installment by installment over 12 months is worth less than a high-commission offer credited immediately. If you don't know your own cost of funds, use the monthly reference rate published by the central bank as the discount rate. That choice holds up with a finance team, since the same rate is the regulatory basis for both the commission caps and the maximum credit card interest rates.

Discount rate used: 3.11% per month
(TCMB monthly reference rate, August 2026 grid)

OFFER A — 20% commission, settled in full at D+1
  Net received ............ 12,000 x 0.80  =  9,600 TRY
  Present value ...........................  9,600 TRY

OFFER B — 12% commission, settled installment by installment
  Nominal net ............. 12,000 x 0.88  = 10,560 TRY
  Paid in 12 installments ... 10,560 / 12  =    880 TRY / month
  Discount factor ........... (1 - 1.0311^-12) / 0.0311 = 9.889
  Present value ............. 880 x 9.889  =  8,702 TRY

GAP ........................ 9,600 - 8,702 =    898 TRY
or about 7.5 points of the sale price, IN FAVOR of the offer
with the higher headline rate.

Rule: with a double-digit annual reference rate, the value date
matters more than the rate. Negotiate it first.

Chapter 4. Accepting TROY and maintaining your BIN table.

TROY is Turkey's domestic card scheme, operated since 2016 by Bankalararası Kart Merkezi A.Ş. Its place in a market entry roadmap has fundamentally changed. An acquirer that isn't certified can't route these cards. For the merchant, the failure looks like a routine decline, then an abandoned cart. Treating TROY as coverage to add later means launching with a quarter of the market's value out of reach. Plan certification alongside Visa and Mastercard, in the first phase.

• The cap doesn't depend on the scheme. The cost gap between TROY and an international brand comes from what the acquirer concedes below the cap, and from each issuer's installment campaigns.
• Co-badging is widespread. A large share of cards carry TROY alongside an international brand, which turns the scheme question into a routing question: which brand gets the authorization request, and under what rule.
• Acceptance outside Turkey runs through reciprocity agreements: with Discover Financial Services (and so Diners Club and PULSE), then with China UnionPay under a mutual recognition agreement signed in November 2025. Use abroad requires the matching logo on the card, which not every TROY card has.
• The BIN table is a production asset. It is used to pick the taksit grid, apply the right cap, and tell consumer cards from corporate cards, all at once. A misclassification spreads silently.

Chapter 5. Connecting FAST, KOLAS, and TR Karekod.

FAST is Turkey's instant payment rail, operated directly by the central bank. KOLAS, run by BKM, resolves an alias to an IBAN. The alias is a phone number, an email address, or an ID. TR Karekod is the national QR code format, which can trigger either a card payment or a FAST transfer. Together, these three building blocks open a collection channel whose economics are nothing like those of credit cards. Funds arrive within seconds, with no prior authorization hold or capture. The card payment state machine gives way to simple reference matching.

• Licensed payment and e-money institutions participate in FAST directly, without a sponsor bank. A licensed partner can therefore offer you instant collection end to end, including KOLAS aliases.
• The daily cap isn't set at the system level. Each bank sets its own, so the customer experience varies with the payer's bank. An order close to the cap needs an explicit failure message, not a generic error.
• A refund is a new outgoing payment. An executed transfer can't be canceled; keep the original reference so you can match the refund to the sale.
• No chargeback will settle a dispute. Your refund policy becomes the customer's only recourse: write it before you open the rail, not after the first dispute.

Chapter 6. Auditing your Turkish partner and repatriating funds.

Your choice of Turkish partner puts the funds you collect at stake. The central bank publishes its license registers, and the list of revoked licenses. In September 2026 they listed 20 licensed payment institutions and 55 licensed e-money institutions, against 14 revoked e-money licenses and 10 revoked payment institution licenses. Revocation is not a theoretical risk. ininal, a pioneer of Turkish prepaid cards, is among the revoked licenses, along with PayFix and Aypara in the same period.

Repatriating funds: three constraints that add up

• The lira is mandatory between residents. Article 4/g of Decision No. 32 on protecting the value of the Turkish currency bars residents from agreeing among themselves on prices or payment obligations in foreign currency or indexed to one, except in cases set by the ministry. Sales of goods, leases, and service and work contracts are all covered. Your Turkish subsidiary therefore invoices in TRY and bears the exchange rate movement between the sale and the repatriation of funds.
• Installment plans lengthen the exposure. Settlement spread over 12 months doesn't just delay cash: it leaves a lira receivable exposed for the whole period. The value date negotiated in chapter 3 is also a hedging decision.
• Stablecoins are not a way out. The regulation published in the Resmî Gazete of April 16, 2021 (No. 31456), in force since April 30, 2021, bans the use of crypto-assets for payments. It also bars payment and e-money institutions from intermediating fund transfers to or from crypto-asset platforms. Holding crypto as an investment remains legal; accepting and settling payments in it does not.