MasterCard has partnered Turkey's Bank Asya to launch a chip and PIN contactless card which can be used to pay tolls on the country's roads and bridges.
Customers can use their AsyaCard to pay the tolls required to use motorways and bridges that are part of the Kahramanmaras public transportation project, a municipal initiative in Eastern Turkey.
Users can also make low value payments at participating merchants by tapping their AsyaCard DIT against specially designed MasterCard PayPass terminals.
The card also utilises MasterCard's two-factor Chip Authentication Programme (CAP), which provides PIN-based verification of cardholders conducting online transactions.
When accessing a Web bank account or shopping online, users will be prompted to authenticate themselves by inserting their card into a small hand-held portable reader, which generates a one-time-password to be entered on the Web page.
Toni Merschen, group head, chip, MasterCard Worldwide, says: "It's great to see that banks in Turkey are now reaping the rewards of the effort that they all put into migrating to chip and PIN (EMV) technology."
Turkey was the first European country to roll out MasterCard PayPass cards when Garanti Bank issued 25,000 to its bonus cardholders in July 2006. The technology has quickly gained momentum, with MasterCard claiming more than 28 million PayPass cards in use at over 109,000 merchants worldwide, as of Q1 2008.