Author
Payment systems expert and technology executive
Arif Ünal is a technology executive with more than 20 years of experience in banking, fintech and payment systems. He writes about card payments (issuing and acquiring), POS, ATM, e-money, FAST and Turkish payments regulation (BRSA and CBRT). He has held senior roles at Finagotech and managed payment systems and digital banking teams at Emlak Katılım, Vakıf Katılım and Türkiye Finans. He holds a B.Sc. in Industrial Engineering from Istanbul University and an M.Sc. in Management Information Systems from Marmara University.
976 articles
Payment Systems
Open banking opens financial data, under the regulations and with the customer's explicit consent, to third-party service providers through standard APIs. The CBRT has published a guide on payment initiation and account information services, covering licensing and technical certification.
Payment Systems
As part of the first-phase work of the Digital Turkish Lira Project led by the Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey (CBRT), the first payments on the Digital Turkish Lira Network were successfully carried out. The CBRT will continue its closed-loop pilot tests in the first quarter of 2023.
Payment Systems
As FAST usage keeps growing, new CBRT regulations are accelerating it further. Payment and e-money institutions will join FAST directly in 2023, and FAST Merchant Payments using the TR-QR Code will go live in the first quarter of 2023.
Laws & Regulations
The CBRT announced that it has launched open banking services in payments, a component of the digital economy roadmap of its liraization strategy, through BKM's Open Banking Gateway (GEÇİT).
Payment Systems
Published in the Official Gazette of 25.11.2022, six days before the Transition Period ended, an amending Regulation and Communiqué extended the transition period for some obligations of payment and e-money institutions from 01.12.2022 to 28.02.2023.
Payment Systems
The BRSA has published a draft regulation amending the Regulation on Debit Cards and Credit Cards. It introduces the card scheme definition, a customer right to choose the card scheme, and an obligation for acquirers to define licensed schemes on merchant POS devices.
Merchant & POS
It's important to first distinguish between magnetic-stripe and fallback transactions. A magnetic-stripe transaction skips the chip entirely, which lowers its security level compared to a fallback transaction.
Payment Systems
This Guide links business models frequently encountered in the payments field to the payment services listed in Law No. 6493 on Payment and Securities Settlement Systems, Payment Services and Electronic Money Institutions, and aims at uniformity in practice.
Laws & Regulations
This communiqué regulates how payment and electronic money institutions manage their information systems, how authorized independent auditors audit them, and the data sharing services of payment service providers.
Merchant & POS
According to the third Card Spending Analysis by TOBB and Visa, average monthly card spending in Turkey in the first quarter of 2022 rose 85 percent year on year, driven by e-commerce, debit cards, and contactless payments.
Payment Systems
Current information: this post describes the limit at the time of publication. The BRSA raised the contactless card transaction limit to 750 TL, effective 1 July. Above the limit, contactless payments need a PIN. The post also traces the limit's history.
Credit Card
With its announcement dated 09.06.2022, the BRSA changed how the credit card minimum payment is calculated: 20 percent of the period debt below a 25,000 lira limit and 40 percent above it. This post covers what banks should do and the likely market impact.