Turkey ranks first in card payment systems in Europe

Payments made with card payment systems in Turkey grew 15 percent in 2015 as the number of credit and debit cards has exceeded 171 million, the highest in Europe.

Interbank Card Center (BKM) General Manager Soner Canko said on Wednesday that the sum of the total payments carried out by card systems reached TL 526 billion ($174.3 billion) in 2015.

Pointing to the contribution of card payment systems to the economy in terms of efficiency over time and savings, Canko said that 2015 was also a landmark year with the development of national payment system TROY, which is expected to start services as of April 2016.

Payments made by credit card grew 14 percent in 2015 while debit card payments increased 28 percent. The number of cards also increased 5 percent, with the number of credit cards reaching 58.2 million and debit cards reaching 112.4 million with respective 2 percent and 7 percent increases. Average spending per card increased from TL 195 million in 2014 to TL 205 million in 2015.

Canko pointed out that the share of card payments in household spending increased from 28 percent to 39 percent over the last five years. Online payments increased 32 percent and made up 11 percent of all card payments, Canko said, emphasizing that these figures show the digital transformation and switch to e-commerce in Turkey. The share of mobile applications in total Internet purchases was 43 percent. Average spending per card on Internet purchases increased from TL 220 million in 2014 to TL 244 in 2015.

The number of contact free cards increased 30 percent to 23 million in 2015 while the number of businesses using the technology increased threefold to 304,000.

With 10,282,517 transactions, the busiest day for card payment systems in 2015 was July 16, the eve of Ramazan Bayramı, also known as Eid al-Fitr, Islam's holy month of observing fasts.

The busiest hour was between 5 p.m. to 6 p.m. local time on Feb. 14, Valentine's Day, with 926,276 transactions.

On June 18, the day before Father's Day, 26,287 transactions were carried out at 5:44 p.m., making it the busiest minute of 2015.

Canko said that 2016 will be the year of "FinTech," and BKM will also work on projects to support FinTech innovations on 2016.