Turkey launches national payments system

Turkey has gone live with its own card payment system, dubbed Troy, as it seeks to boost electronic money and usher in a cashless society by 2023.

  34 5 comments

Turkey launches national payments system

Editorial

This content has been selected, created and edited by the Finextra editorial team based upon its relevance and interest to our community.

Following in the footsteps of the likes of Canada, India and Italy, Turkey is hoping that building its own card system will boost its economy by reducing the use of cash, lowering inflation and tackling the black market.

The country's ATMs, POS terminals and e-commerce sites are ready for Troy transactions and cards bearing the Troy logo will now start making their way to customers.

Soner Canko, GM, Interbank Card Center (BKM), says: "Make a transaction over a POS terminal, an ATM or the internet and, whether you are paying or being paid, your transaction will be processed in a secure, rapid and problem-free way. Moreover, it will be unique to Turkey. The winner will be Turkey."

BKM says that around 98% of the five billion card transactions carried out on Turkish cards every year are domestic, but adds that banks can make deals with other card schemes to enable international payments.

Adds Canko: "We aspire to create a cashless society by 2023. In the future, when we look back to today, we shall remember with pride this meaningful moment when Turkey’s Payment Method was launched."

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Comments: (5)

A Finextra member 

Pride in plastics!? Isn't there anyone in BKM who lives in 2016?!

Amazing how deception can spread to national scales!

A Finextra member 

Good to see some competition to the major card schemes - does anyone know how the merchant interchange compares to the big brands?

Ketharaman Swaminathan

Ketharaman Swaminathan Founder and CEO at GTM360 Marketing Solutions

Don't know about Canada; India's RuPay debit card is predominantly used to withdraw cash from ATMs instead of ushering in the cashless society that was its goal. Not sure why there's no mention of China, which AFAIK is the only country that has built a successful domestic card scheme.

A Finextra member 

Maybe the UK LINK (ATM only) scheme should look to add POS acquiring? With the big banks losing their stake in Visa Europe there is a lot more incentive to create competition.  LINK has most of the things in place that would be required to move to POS in addition to ATM...

A Finextra member 

in this time troy only for Turkey citicen competitor of visa/mc  and will be germany and other eu country 

troy company from Turkey Interbank Card Center

http://bkm.com.tr/en/urunler-ve-hizmetler/troy/

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