Payments in Turkey: Troy, taksit and local acquiring for online stores

A fashion retailer or electronics store that starts selling to Turkey usually launches with the card setup it already has: an acquirer in Europe, Visa and Mastercard, a single-payment checkout. The first weeks bring two surprises. Shoppers ask where the instalment options are, and a share of Turkish cards fail before the issuer has looked at them.

This article explains how Turkish shoppers pay online, how the taksit rules work, why a cross-border acquirer falls short, where Troy, FAST and wallets fit, how 3-D Secure and refunds work, and the mistakes that cost orders. For the market overview, see our Turkey guide; for the domestic scheme, our Troy page.

Why do Turkish shoppers expect instalments?

Because card spending, and online card spending in particular, is built around them. According to the Interbank Card Center (BKM), internet card payments reached TL 891.6 billion in June 2026, up 60% on June 2025, and made up 31% of all card payment value. Turkey had 150.4 million credit cards and 221.6 million debit cards at the end of that month.

Garanti BBVA’s report on card payments in 2025, based on BKM data, found that instalment payments represented 57.8% of e-commerce purchases, up from 55.5% in 2024. The same release gives a second measure: 34.4% of e-commerce credit card spending was paid in instalments, against 19.5% for credit card purchases overall. The two figures are measured differently, but they point the same way: shoppers split the price far more often online than in stores. The report also found that travel (57%) and electronics and computers (51%) had the highest share of purchases made online.

For a shopper, taksit is part of the price. A laptop that costs TL 30,000 is, in the shopper’s mind, four payments of TL 7,500, and a checkout that shows only the full amount is asking for a different purchase.

How do the taksit rules work?

The banking regulator sets the limits, and the bank or acquirer works within them. BDDK’s page on credit card instalment limits and bans, issued under article 26 of the Regulation on Bank Cards and Credit Cards, sets a general cap of 12 months for purchases and cash advances, with lower caps by category:

Category	Maximum instalments
General purchases	12 months
Electronics, except televisions up to TL 5,000	4 months
Televisions up to TL 5,000	9 months
Tablets; club and association payments	6 months
Health products, furniture and electrical appliances	9 months
Non-bullion jewellery	3 months
Domestic airline, travel agency and accommodation spending	18 months
Refurbished mobile phones from an authorised refurbisher or seller	12 months, no amount limit

Some purchases cannot be split at all. The same page bans credit card instalments for printed and bullion jewellery, telecommunications, direct marketing, airline, travel and accommodation spending abroad (Northern Cyprus excepted), spending made abroad, food, alcoholic drinks, fuel, cosmetics, office supplies, and gift cards, vouchers and similar products that contain no specific good or service. Corporate credit cards have a general cap of 18 months.

Two things follow for a merchant. Your category decides what you can offer, so a cosmetics shop offers no taksit while a furniture store can offer up to 9. And the instalment offer depends on the card programme as well as the acquirer. 2Checkout’s documentation, for example, lists instalments of up to 9 payments on Bonus, World, CardFinans, Paraf and Maximum cards, and none on Axess, Advantage or Smiles cards through its service. Ask each acquirer which programmes and counts it supports, and what it charges per instalment count.

Why does a cross-border acquirer fall short in Turkey?

Because a Turkish card payment taken abroad is a different transaction. BDDK’s list bans instalments on spending made abroad, so a payment that reaches an acquirer outside Turkey cannot be split, whatever the checkout shows. A cross-border setup also meets cards that are not enabled for international use: 2Checkout’s documentation says nearly 20% of Turkish cards do not support international transactions, which it gives as the reason it processes locally.

Topic	Cross-border acquirer	Turkish processing
Taksit	Not available: spending abroad cannot be split	Available within BDDK caps and the acquirer’s programmes
Troy-only cards	No international scheme to run on	Accepted where the acquirer supports Troy
Cards not enabled for use abroad	Declined	Processed as domestic payments
Settlement	The acquirer’s currency	TRY, or a foreign currency where the provider offers it

Local processing does not always need a Turkish company. Worldline’s documentation for Troy says payments are processed locally with or without a local entity, and that settlement can be in Turkish lira or cross-border in more than 20 currencies, chosen during onboarding. Our article on local versus cross-border acquiring covers the trade-offs in general.

Where do Troy, FAST and wallets fit?

Troy is a card scheme, not a separate method, and it is too large to ignore. BKM reported in January 2026 that TROY cards rose 80% in 2025 to 90 million, that spending on them grew 125% to TL 4.8 trillion, and that TROY’s share of card spending by value reached 25.3%, with a target of 30%. BKM says TROY is valid at all domestic POS terminals and e-commerce platforms, and that abroad a card can be used where the international scheme on its back is accepted. A co-badged card sent abroad therefore runs on Visa or Mastercard, if the issuer allows it; a Troy-only card has nowhere to go.

FAST, the central bank’s instant payment system, covers bank transfers rather than cards. The Central Bank of the Republic of Türkiye says FAST opened to all customers on 8 January 2021, accepts payment orders around the clock and executes payments within seconds, with banks as participants. It suits shoppers who prefer to pay from their bank account, but it carries no instalments. Our article on account-to-account payments covers how transfers work at checkout.

Wallets exist too. BKM operates BKM Express, which it describes as Turkey’s first digital wallet, launched in 2012. Before adding any wallet, check which cards it holds, whether instalments are available inside it, and how refunds flow back.

How does 3-D Secure work for Turkish cards?

Expect it on most online card payments. Worldline describes Troy’s domestic 3-D Secure as a one-time code sent by SMS as part of BKM’s GO service, with no extra implementation for the merchant. 2Checkout’s documentation says 3-D Secure is mandatory for debit card transactions. BKM lists 3-D Secure and GO among the online authentication systems it runs.

Turkey is outside the European Economic Area, so the PSD2 exemptions covered in our article on 3DS2 exemptions do not shape the flow here; the issuer decides. Build the checkout to wait for the authentication result, and measure abandonment at the SMS step by issuer, because late codes and timed-out bank pages are a common cause of lost orders.

What do Turkish consumer rules mean for refunds?

Plan returns into the payment flow. The Regulation on Distance Contracts, made under articles 48 and 84 of Consumer Protection Law No. 6502, gives shoppers 14 days to withdraw without giving a reason or paying a penalty. The seller must refund all payments within 14 days of receiving the withdrawal notice, in one go, in a way that suits the payment method the shopper used, and at no cost to the shopper. The shopper must send the goods back within 10 days of the notice.

The rules widened in 2026. According to a client note from the law firm Hergüner Bilgen Üçer, amendments that took effect on 1 January 2026 bring mobile phones, smartwatches, tablets and computers back into the right of withdrawal, and the seller can no longer charge return shipping when the shopper uses the carrier named before the sale. For an electronics store that sells on taksit, that means more full refunds of instalment purchases, each of which must reach the shopper in one payment.

Worked example: does local acquiring with taksit pay for itself?

Example figures, for illustration only.

A fashion retailer based in Georgia sells to Turkey with an average order of TL 3,000. Clothing falls under the general 12-month cap. Each month 10,000 Turkish shoppers reach the payment step. Through its European acquirer it takes single payments only, at an all-in cost of 3.5%, and 62% of shoppers complete the payment. It then adds a Turkish acquirer that offers up to 6 taksit at a base cost of 2%, plus a 5% charge on instalment orders, which the merchant absorbs. Completion rises to 72%, and 45% of orders choose taksit.

Setup	Completed orders	Revenue	Acceptance cost	Net revenue
Cross-border, single payment	6,200	TL 18,600,000	TL 651,000	TL 17,949,000
Turkish acquirer, up to 6 taksit	7,200	TL 21,600,000	TL 918,000	TL 20,682,000

In the second setup, the base cost is TL 432,000 (2% of TL 21,600,000) and the taksit charge is TL 486,000 (5% of the TL 9,720,000 paid by 3,240 instalment orders). Acceptance costs more in total, but net revenue rises by TL 2,733,000 a month. The result turns on the completion gap, which only your own traffic will show, and on the charge per instalment count, which you should get in writing from each acquirer.

What are the common mistakes?

• Showing taksit on every card. Instalment options depend on the issuer’s programme and the product category. Show them after the shopper enters a card number, and hide them for categories BDDK bans.
• Treating Troy as optional. A quarter of card spending runs on TROY, according to BKM. Route Troy cards only to acquirers that accept the scheme, and test them before launch.
• Offering taksit through a foreign acquirer. Spending abroad cannot be split under BDDK’s rules. If the checkout shows instalments and the payment goes abroad, the shopper is charged in full and complains.
• Refunding instalment by instalment. The distance contract rules require the refund in one go within 14 days. Ask the acquirer how a refund on a taksit purchase appears on the statement.
• Ignoring the SMS step. Most Turkish card payments pass through 3-D Secure. Track abandonment there by issuer, not only the final approval rate.
• One acquirer for all Turkish volume. If it has an outage or stops supporting a card programme, Turkish revenue stops. Our article on adding a second PSP covers how to ramp one up.

How does Omno handle Turkish card payments?

Omno can connect several Turkish and cross-border providers behind one API, with routing and PSP eligibility rules by country, method, currency and customer group, and cascading to the next provider in the rule when one is unavailable or rejects the request. The hosted checkout runs cards with 3-D Secure, saved cards are tokenized, and webhooks confirm every payment. The instalment offer itself, its counts and its cost, stays in your contract with each acquirer. The smart routing and cascading page covers the setup.