Whether you’re an entrepreneur who has decided to launch their first website targeting the Turkish market, or you’re a Rank A company that is on the edge of launching its Turkish website, there is one critical point that will make you almost all the difference, and I’m afraid you will miss.
I would assume you have optimised every aspect starting from targeted products to SEO and logistics, the whole team is certain they left no gap, some of you have expanded to multiple countries in matter of weeks, (hats off for that) and you’ve assumed Turkey should be a similar case. Well, you’d be wrong.
Let’s sail off to a quick hypothetical scenario that shall serve our case on-spot. A new store opened in your neighborhood, the billboards, the commercials, and the glamorous sign outside served their duty and got you in.
You are satisfied by the tuned vibe and smooth arrangement of the products, the offers and deals the store proposed got you over your budget, but you’re in no remorse… yet. Reaching to the cashier.. the moment of truth.. the beginning of a long lasting win-win relation between the seller and you.
You hand your card out, the representative replies with either:
1.”Sorry, we do not accept this local card type”.
2.”The local currency is not accepted, there will be an X% extra conversion fee from your bank.
3.”The card has been declined” In this scenario what they may or may not mention is that they are processing your card abroad, which is a transaction that banks apply further fraud filters due to international practices, increasing your decline rate.
At this point it is so easy for the customer to drop his basket and say farewell to a relation that never clicked its starting point. A sad team of accountants stumbling between marketing, design, and inventory invoices would be all what you are left with.
These are the main three reasons behind website owners picking local processors to perform their transactions from a specific country.
But wait, how is Turkey different?
For point 1 above, it gets dramatically more expected in Turkey, as there are 6 cards here that offer instalments, a solution that allows the customer to divide his payment over a period of up to 9 months. Almost half of all payments in Turkey are done via instalments, so I’m afraid your website will be screaming “I am not fit for this market, I do not offer the preferred payment for 45% of your fellow Turks”.
Partnering with iyzico makes your expanding experience much more seamless, by enabling your website to accept all the 6 local cards that enable instalments, aside to all the other credit and debit cards with one simple integration.
For points 2 and 3 the case is no different. Turkey, being a country with a huge cross-border buying power -over 1.5 Billion USD spent in 2015 alone on international websites- with a separate currency and bank infrastructure than either Europe, the MENA, or the U.S, this shoots fraud filters off the roof making a high chance for your transaction to get declined, along with implying a currency conversion fee from the bank.
Confusing checkouts, unsupported currencies and payment security concerns contribute to 25% of the abandoned cart issue. Keep in mind this statistic is not covering the incomplete sale happening from a declined card, and not offering instalments when it comes to the Turkish market.
To conclude, connecting to iyzico when penetrating the Turkish market dramatically increases your conversion rates, along with saving you the hassle of connecting multiple different banks to offer all instalment cards. That would simply mean more revenue for you, and higher customer satisfaction!
iyzico is the leading collecting PSP in Turkey, processing for some of the global leaders in Textile, SAAS, Travel websites, and Gaming.
You can reach out to me directly on: [email protected] for us to assist you offer a more local payment solution for Turkish users and skyrocket your conversion and acceptance rates.
Source for abandoned cart reasons: SaleCycle.
Source for instalment percentage: BKM
Source for Turks cross-border spending: BKM
