Mehmet Sezgin, CEO of Garanti Payment Systems, a subsidiary of
Turkish lender Garanti, has shared his views on the state and
future of payments in Turkey with RBI.
The interview will be published in the upcoming issue of
RBI, but here is a short teaser:
Garanti Bank is on a path of transformation, not, as Sezgin
emphasised, because they do not “like” credit cards anymore, but
because profitability from credit cards is becoming more and more
challenging.
So the bank is creating other sources of income, including, of
course, payments innovation.
Most recently, Garanti teamed up with Turkcell and
MasterCard for the launch of Cep-T ParaCard, an open-to-all
handsets prepaid card that does not require registration and
enables users to send money to mobile phones or Garanti ATMs.
The card can be bought and topped up with credit at any Turkcell
Communication Centre.

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By GlobalDataMoney can also be loaded on the card from any Garanti Bank
ATM.
The SIM card based service will work on any handset and enable
users to send and receive funds on their mobile phones, which they
can then withdraw from a Garanti ATM by keying in a code sent to
the receiver.
In the interview, Sezgin shares his views on the challenges in
and the future of the payments space in Turkey.