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The Turkish payment market and its specifics: An interview with Soner Canko
Journal of Payments Strategy & Systems,
10
(3),
230-237
(2016)
Abstract
The Turkish cashless payments market has become one of the most important markets in Europe with its strong infrastructure and many innovative products and services. Turkey is the largest market in Europe, with its 114 million debit cards, 59 million credit cards and 2.5 million terminals. BKM, with its pivotal role in the Turkish banking sector, has pioneered innovations in payments, and Turkish banks have rolled out best-in-class payment products well ahead of their counterparts in other advanced markets — BKM launched the world’s first national digital wallet. BKM developed several e-government projects and continues to develop ways to make Turkey a more cashless society. In fact, the role of BKM has turned to becoming an incubation centre for innovation in card payments systems for issuers and acquirers operating in Turkey. In this scope, Troy, the Turkish National Payment Scheme, has been initiated by issuers and acquirers in Turkey and has been developed in close collaboration with all stakeholders: BKM, issuers and acquirers. In this interview, Soner Canko, CEO of BKM, provides insights in the Turkish payments market, the role of BKM therein, and tells us about the launch of Troy.
Keywords: Turkey; BKM; Troy; domestic card scheme; debit cards; credit cards
The full article is available to subscribers to the journal.
Author's Biography
Soner Canko is CEO of BKM, the Interbank Card Center in Turkey. Dr Canko graduated from Istanbul University, Faculty of Political Science, Public Administration Department. He also received a master’s degree and PhD from Istanbul University, Faculty of Economics. Dr Canko’s career commenced in 1990, and he has held sales, management and consulting roles at Procter & Gamble, Citibank and Hewlett Packard. When he was the CEO of Bilesim Payment Systems, Dr Canko also served on the Board of Directors of BKM (Interbank Card Center of Turkey) as member and Chairman. He was the founder and CEO of First Data Turkey and, finally, Assistant General Manager of Ziraat Bank.
Diederik Bruggink is Managing Director of Bruggink Consultancy and is an independent international expert in cards, payments, and market infrastructures. During his career, he has led and worked on several international and high-visibility projects, mainly with a focus on cashless payments, across the whole payments value chain, from (e-commerce) merchant acquisition through to issuing banks and within card switching and card processing organisations. He was one of the key authors of the first three editions of the ‘World Payments Report’, and he makes regular appearances on conferences in the cards and payments industry. He is a member of the Editorial Board of the Journal of Payments Strategy & Systems.
