🇹🇷 Payments in Turkey

Who runs what: TCMB, BDDK, BKM

An extreme card-first market is one where cards are the default channel for retail spending, from small everyday purchases to durable goods. Turkey is one of them. Card payments there totaled TRY 24,062 billion in 2025 (BKM annual review, published January 16, 2026), up 51.9% year over year. At the end of December 2025, the card base stood at 142.1 million credit cards, 209.0 million debit cards, and 109.5 million prepaid cards (BKM statistics). It is served by 1,814,083 POS terminals and 56,514 ATMs. No other country in Europe matches this density of credit card acceptance.

Authority over Turkish payments is split among three institutions with distinct remits, and confusing them is the most common mistake foreign teams make. The TCMB (Türkiye Cumhuriyet Merkez Bankası, the central bank) operates the payment systems (EFT, FAST). Since January 1, 2020, it has licensed and supervised payment institutions and e-money institutions, and it caps merchant fees by regulation. The BDDK (Bankacılık Düzenleme ve Denetleme Kurumu, the banking regulator) oversees banks and enforces Law No. 5464 on bank cards and credit cards. It alone sets taksit terms. BKM (Bankalararası Kart Merkezi), founded in 1990 by 13 Turkish banks, runs interbank card processing (authorization, clearing, and settlement), plus the national products TROY, TR Karekod, KOLAS, and the open banking gateway.

Taksit: the mechanism that drives Turkish retail

Taksit is a credit card installment payment chosen at the point of sale, on the terminal or in the online checkout flow. It is a built-in option of the card payment flow: the authorization message carries it, and the merchant decides whether to offer it and pays for it. It differs from point-of-sale consumer loans, which require a separate application; from BNPL, which brings in a third-party lender; and from installment plans an issuer offers after the purchase. No other feature sets the Turkish market apart as sharply. For foreign providers, the difficulty lies in where it sits in the chain. The number of installments must be known at authorization, carried in the message, and picked up again at settlement.

BKM’s annual statistics show taksit’s share of card spending. Of the TRY 20,425 billion spent on credit cards in 2025, TRY 3,991 billion, or 19.5%, went through taksit, versus TRY 16,433 billion paid in a single payment (BKM, January 2026). The share is much higher online. Card e-commerce totaled TRY 6,706 billion, equal to 32.8% of credit card spending, and 34.4% of that was paid in installments. In other words, a third of Turkish card e-commerce runs through taksit.

• “Peşin fiyatına taksit”, literally “taksit at the cash price”: the customer pays in N installments at no extra charge, and the merchant absorbs the entire cost. This is standard practice in Turkish retail, not an occasional promotion.
• “Vade farkı”, the surcharge for deferred payment, applied when the merchant won’t absorb the cost and passes it on in the installment price.
• “Ek taksit”, extra installments offered in bank promotions beyond the standard plan, funded by the bank, the merchant, or both.
• “Taksit erteleme”, deferral of the first installment, widely used at year-end and during major retail events.
• The number of installments is a conversion lever, not a convenience. In a market where real incomes erode every month, customers compare monthly payments. A checkout that shows only a total price loses out to a competitor that displays “12 × X TRY.”

Taksit is an economic policy lever, and it keeps moving

A macroprudential instrument is a regulatory tool an authority uses to influence the volume and direction of credit. It targets systemic risk, not the risk of a single institution. In Turkey, the maximum number of installments is a macroprudential instrument, on a par with a policy rate or a capital ratio. Its legal basis rests on two texts: Law No. 5464 on bank cards and credit cards (published in Turkey’s official gazette, the Resmî Gazete, on March 1, 2006, No. 26095) and its implementing regulation, the Banka Kartları ve Kredi Kartları Hakkında Yönetmelik. Article 26 of that regulation does not set the terms itself. It provides that installment terms are set by decision of the BDDK board, after consultation with the Ministry of Treasury and Finance and the Ministry of Trade.

This delegation explains how fast the rule changes. Without amending the law, the regulator can tighten or loosen spending on a category of goods within days by publishing a decision in the Resmî Gazete. When domestic demand heats up or the current account deficit widens, terms get shorter; when a sector needs support, they get longer. The 2026 amendment is a case in point: it extended the allowed installment term on appliances, furniture, and school fees from 9 to 12 months.

• Categories barred from taksit fall under the same framework and have been stable since the 2014 wave of restrictions: telecommunications, food and groceries, fuel, cosmetics, alcoholic beverages, office supplies, gift cards and vouchers not tied to a specific good or service, direct sales, jewelry in bullion form, and spending abroad.
• Corporate credit cards (kurumsal kredi kartı) are capped by the regulation at 9 months of installments, with the exception raised to 12 months for appliances, furniture, and school fees.
• Amount thresholds add a second layer: above a given sale price, some categories drop from a long plan to a short one, so the rule depends on the transaction amount, not just the MCC.
• The MCC determines eligibility. A miscategorized merchant will be denied plans it is entitled to, or will offer plans it has no right to grant, which exposes its acquirer.

What acceptance costs: fees capped by the central bank

The merchant discount rate (MDR) is the fee the acquiring bank keeps on each card payment. It is expressed as a percentage of the sale and, in most markets, is set solely by contract between acquirer and merchant. Turkey departs from that model: the central bank regulates the MDR. Each month, the TCMB publishes a document titled “Üye İşyerlerine Uygulanacak Azami Komisyon Oranları” (maximum commission rates for merchants). It sets the maximum rates for card payments. These caps are indexed to a reference rate calculated using the method in Communiqué No. 2020/4 on fees chargeable to business customers. Banks remain free to charge less: “bankalar bu oranları aşmamak üzere… serbestçe belirleyebilecektir” (banks may set them freely, provided they do not exceed these rates).

cap(N) = 3.56%  +  (N - 1) x 1.780%       N = number of installments

  N = 1  (no taksit)    ->   3.56%
  N = 3                 ->   3.56 + 2 x 1.780  =   7.12%
  N = 6                 ->   3.56 + 5 x 1.780  =  12.46%
  N = 9                 ->   3.56 + 8 x 1.780  =  17.80%
  N = 12                ->   3.56 + 11 x 1.780 =  23.14%

Domestic debit card .......................  1.04%  (fixed cap)
Foreign-issued card .......................  1.90%  (fixed cap)

BSMV (banking transaction tax) ............  added on top of the fee;
                                             it is NOT included in
                                             the caps above.

Example: 12 installments at the cap, 5% BSMV on the fee
         23.14% x 1.05 = 24.30% of the amount collected.

Two gaps between caps directly affect acceptance margins. Domestic debit cards, capped at 1.04%, cost nearly three and a half times less than a single-payment credit card transaction. A merchant whose checkout steers customers who don’t need installments toward debit cuts its acceptance costs accordingly. Foreign-issued cards are capped at 1.90%. That cap limits the cost of inbound payments, and therefore the cost for Turkish merchants that depend on tourism and for acquiring offers built around those flows.

FAST: instant payments run by the central bank

FAST (Fonların Anlık ve Sürekli Transferi) is Turkey’s instant payment rail. It went live on December 18, 2020 and opened to customers on January 8, 2021. The TCMB operates it directly, as it does EFT. No bank consortium or private infrastructure is involved in running it. Its growth ranks among the fastest seen on any instant payment rail worldwide, and it has reshuffled the roles of Turkey’s two credit transfer systems. Retail payments have moved to FAST, while EFT now handles large-value payments, treasury, and interbank transfers.

• Per-transaction limit: TRY 100,000, raised by the TCMB in April 2024. There is no system-wide cumulative daily limit: each bank sets its own, so the customer experience varies from one institution to the next.
• TRY 250,000 for merchant payments made via FAST-TR Karekod with dynamic authentication, since April 4, 2024, a limit designed specifically for merchant acceptance.
• Ödeme İste (“request a payment”), FAST’s request-to-pay layer, launched on January 18, 2025. Initially aimed at person-to-person payments, it was extended in its second version to merchant payments and e-commerce, with partial payment, early payment, and due-date deferral (TCMB, 2025 annual report).
• Mandatory open banking: payment data-sharing services (ÖHVPS) must go through the BKM GEÇİT gateway. Version 2.0.0, announced by the TCMB on March 17, 2026, extends account information to card data and card transactions and adds initiation of future-dated and recurring payments. At that point the ecosystem had 16.4 million users, 12.3 million daily transactions, and 53 participants.

TR Karekod: the national QR standard and its adoption curve

TR Karekod is Turkey’s national QR standard, defined by BKM and rolled out from 2020. What sets it apart is its dual nature: the same code can trigger a card payment or a FAST credit transfer. In other markets, several proprietary wallet QR codes coexist without interoperability, so merchants have to display one code per accepted wallet. Turkey mandated a single format, interoperable across banks and rails and operated by the interbank card center itself.

The table tracks the two mobile initiation methods. The number of QR transactions more than quadrupled between 2024 and 2025, and H1 2026 alone already exceeds all of 2025 by value. Over the same period, mobile contactless payments, which BKM reports separately, plateaued and then declined. In Turkey, QR is an extra initiation layer on top of an already dense acceptance network. With 1.8 million POS terminals in the country, it does not play the catch-up role it plays in markets short on terminals.

TROY: Europe’s fastest-growing domestic scheme

TROY is Turkey’s domestic card scheme, launched by BKM in 2016. For its first few years, it remained a modest sovereignty project, limited to a handful of state-owned issuers. That changed in 2024. Its growth since then is the fastest seen for any domestic scheme in Europe, and it changes the business conditions for every acquirer operating in the country.

About 25 of every 100 lira paid by card in Turkey now go through TROY. This growth stems from a public policy of replacing the international schemes, backed by a mandate on the public sector and by issuance at the big banks. It does not reflect cardholder preference. The momentum is managed from the top: sustaining it depends on public procurement and issuing mandates, not on changing payment habits.

• International acceptance through reciprocity agreements. TROY has not built a global network. It relies on agreements with Discover Financial Services, including Diners Club and PULSE, and on a mutual recognition agreement signed with China UnionPay in November 2025. A card works abroad only if the relevant logo actually appears on it, which is not true of every TROY card.
• Co-badging is the norm, not the exception. A large share of cards carry TROY alongside an international brand, which shifts the question from scheme choice to routing: which brand is used at authorization, under what rule, and with what effect on acceptance costs.
• An acquirer that doesn’t accept TROY turns away a quarter of the market by value. This is no longer an optional coverage extension; it is a prerequisite for doing business. Any go-to-market roadmap for Turkey must put TROY certification on par with Visa and Mastercard, not in a later phase.
• Foreign-issued cards are capped at a 1.90% fee by the TCMB, across all schemes. The cost gap between the international brands and TROY therefore plays out in domestic issuing, not in inbound payments.

Inflation, credit, and risk: reading a Turkish P&L

Turkey’s monetary regime combines double-digit inflation with a high policy rate, and both drive the economics of acceptance. Annual consumer price inflation was 30.89% in December 2025, with prices up 0.89% on the month. The 12-month average was 34.88% (TÜİK, Turkey’s statistics office, January 5, 2026). The TCMB kept its policy rate (the one-week repo rate) at 37% at its Monetary Policy Committee meeting on July 23, 2026. The overnight lending rate stood at 40% and the overnight borrowing rate at 35.5%.

Inflation also explains why taksit looms so large. For a cardholder, spreading a purchase over 12 months in an economy with 30% inflation means repaying in devalued currency a price locked in today. With no surcharge, taksit becomes credit at a negative real rate. The merchant bears the other side. It finances that credit either through a higher fee or by waiting 12 months to be paid in full, and at this level of inflation the second option costs even more. The Turkish merchant’s key trade-off is the value date, not the fee rate.

• The settlement schedule outweighs the rate. Between a higher fee with immediate settlement and a low fee with settlement spread over the installment plan, the math almost always favors getting paid fast. Model it explicitly, with the inflation rate as an input.
• Merchant cash flow is structurally tight. A payments company that provides financing (merchant cash advances, discounting of future installments) offers Turkish merchants far more value than a few basis points off the fee.
• The card limit is the real constraint on conversion. Because taksit immediately ties up the full amount against the approved credit line, over-limit declines hit purchases that would look unremarkable elsewhere. This shows up in response codes, provided you collect the raw codes.
• The prepaid card base is shrinking: from 109.5 million in December 2025 to 99.7 million in June 2026 (BKM), while credit and debit cards keep growing. The decline coincides with the TCMB’s cleanup of the e-money institution register.

Accepting payments from abroad: licensing, currency, and what breaks

Accepting payments from abroad means a merchant or provider based outside Turkey accepting payments from Turkish customers. The target market is large and growing fast. Turkish e-commerce reached TRY 4,567 billion in 2025, up 52.2%, across 5.94 billion transactions. That is $115.43 billion, 6.9% of GDP, and 19.3% of all commerce (Ministry of Trade, ETBİS report presentation, May 2026). Online retail accounts for TRY 2,460 billion of that, up 51.8%. But access to this market requires a local license, and there is no practical way around it.

The regime for nonbank providers is set out in Law No. 6493 of 2013 on payment and securities settlement systems, payment services, and e-money institutions. Since January 1, 2020, the TCMB has handled licensing and supervision and publishes the registers. They listed 20 licensed payment institutions and 55 licensed e-money institutions, against 14 revoked e-money licenses and 10 revoked payment institution licenses (TCMB public registers, accessed September 2026). The revocations hit established companies. ininal, a pioneer of Turkish prepaid cards, is among them: its revocation was reported at the end of 2025, along with those of PayFix and Aypara.

• The PSP landscape is concentrated and local. iyzico, founded in Istanbul in 2013, was acquired by PayU (part of Naspers/Prosus) for $165 million in a deal announced in June 2019 and closed in December 2019. PayTR and Param round out the trio of domestic infrastructure providers. None of them is interchangeable with a Western PSP: their value lies precisely in managing the taksit grid, bank promotions, and settlement schedules.
• Verify the license before signing. The TCMB publishes its registers, including the list of revoked licenses. Contracting with an institution whose license has been revoked puts collected funds directly at risk. Repeat the check periodically, not just once at onboarding.
• Require raw response codes. In a market where taksit maxes out card limits, the breakdown of declines into over-limit, issuer, and technical declines drives the retry strategy. PSPs’ aggregated labels are not enough.
• Plan TROY certification from phase one, on par with Visa and Mastercard, not as a later coverage extension.
• Treat taksit configuration as live data, aligned with the BDDK’s official list, versioned and with effective dates, since administrative decisions take effect when published in the Resmî Gazete.