Alternative payment systems are a service provided by intermediary companies that use virtual POS accounts in the background in order to give merchants an advantage. Law No. 6493 calls these companies payment institutions.
There are currently many alternative payment systems in our country, such as Turkpos, Iyzico, Ipara and Paytr. Many e-commerce software companies and open-source e-commerce platforms work integrated with these systems.
What Are the Differences Between a Virtual POS Obtained from Banks and Alternative Payment Systems?
There are many differences. Let's list a few of them:
For example, suppose you made an agreement with Garanti bank for a virtual POS, and according to your company's agreement you got a rate of 1.5% for a single payment and 4% for 7-installment purchases. From your e-commerce site you can only offer installment purchases to Garanti credit cards. However, your customers can pay with all credit cards in a single payment. In short, to offer installments with a virtual POS you need to make a separate agreement with each bank. Of course, you must also pay each bank's annual virtual POS usage fee separately.
This is where alternative payment systems come into play. They do not have rules as strict as banks during the application, and depending on the payment method you can use the virtual POS of up to 8-9 banks. You do the integration once, and afterwards you can use the virtual POS of all banks for both single-payment and installment transactions. The rates of alternative payment systems are higher than those of a virtual POS, but they are an ideal payment method for companies that offer installment purchases.
As a second difference, when a virtual POS is obtained from banks, extra fees such as an inefficiency fee and a virtual POS fee may apply, whereas alternative payment institutions have no such fees.
As a third difference, integration with alternative payment institutions is faster than with bank virtual POS accounts, and no setup cost is paid.
