A Quick Glance to Turkish Card Market

Turkey has been know as one of the most important emerging countries in the world for long years. this is not only because of the population but also for its young generation who are very interested in new technologies and new banking operations. It is known that Turkish market has around 28 million people who are using banking services and there is an estimation of 6 million more to penetrate into this sector in 2-3 years time. There are about 2.4 cards per person including all cards (debit and credit cards all together). However this figure was 2.7 previously and dropped to 2.4 due to the new legal obligations took place in the last 4-5 years. Furthermore, there are about 1.9 million POS machines in Turkey which is known about one of the biggest amount in the world. This means that Turkey is also in the first places in POS/person ratio. Moreover, for each POS there are almost 28 credit cards in place in the country.

The retention and the loyalties of the customers are given very much importance in Turkey. The perception of the consumers for the gold and the platinium cards are still very high and there are many campaigns or applications regarding the retention of the existing loyal and HNWI customers in Turkey. It is known that gold and above cards are 25% of all number of credit cards in Turkey. There are many value propositons through these cards which are in example lounge services, insurances, check ups and so on. The international credit card volumes has been increasing due to the new happenings in the market. The international travels have been increasing which results with more international expenditures through credit cards.

When we come to the business card side, the transaction amounts and the number of cards have been steadily increasing due to the new approach of the government to the tax issues. Now, the merchants are more watched and seriously inspected so they give more importance to the tax payments. Moreover, the cheque transactions are getting lower due to the new act passed 1 year ago which forced the merchants to accept more credit cards rather than the cheques.

There is a new aspect in the developments in the card sector which is the big increase in the payments through debit cards. Debit cards with no funding cost and with high exchange commission earned by the issuer bank have been promoted by the banks to their consumers to be used in the purchases. However, despite the big growth in the purchases of the debit cards by volume and by number, their market share is only 5% where the big portion is still earned by the credit cards by 81%. However, in the cash transactions the market share of debit cards is more than 90%.