Having launched only in May 2017, more than 2 million –TROY branded cards are in circulation. With ambitious goals and innovative solutions like mobile contactless payment, TROY aims to contribute digital transformation in Turkey's payments ecosystem.
Established by BKM (The Interbank Card Center) as the first national card scheme of Turkey, Turkey's Payment Method TROY made a swift entrance to the new year by enabling Host Card Emulation (HCE) mobile contactless payment solution to TROY card holders.
Having launched in May 2017 for consumers, the number of TROY cards reached up to 2 million by the end of the year. More than 12 million transactions equal to 3 million Turkish Liras occurred through TROY cards in 2017.
40 million TROY cards by 2022
During a press conference last week, Dr. Soner Canko, the CEO of BKM evaluated TROY's performance in 2017 and shared ambitious future goals of Turkey's new card payment brand: “As the biggest market in Europe, Turkey is the center of innovative payment technologies, which serve as the basis for the idea of a cashless society. The market has further growth potential considering the size of unbanked population. Having started its journey just a little while ago, Turkey's new payment brand has made a great progress. We can easily say that Turkey loves TROY and we are ready for an even brighter future. We target 40 million TROY cards by 2022.”
Cenk Temiz, the Executive Vice President of BKM highlighted the importance of digital transformation in payment systems. “First and foremost, the global move toward digitalization, which is transforming everyday life, will drive the future of payments as well. Digitalization will be the engine for the growth in payments especially for local schemes. Contactless and mobile could be the first steps. Mobile is especially critical as it offers them the opportunity to differentiate themselves by offering value-added non-card services” said Cenk Temiz.
TROY innovation center enables fast, secure, easy mobile payment
According to BKM's Online Payments Report, mobile payment has nearly 30% share in online retail payments in Turkey. This trend shows that Turkish consumers are keen to embrace new payment technologies. “TROY is poised to leverage this dynamism in the market in order to drive the innovation in the Turkish payments market and become benchmark for other national payments scheme. Therefore we established TROY Innovation Center and we are proud to launch mobile contactless solution as the first product of TROY Innovation Center” said Cenk Temiz. TROY's mobile solution is currently available on NFC-enabled Android devices and contactless POS devices. TROY is working on expanding this solution to other devices.