Turkey extends approval process for credit card holders to use cards for online shopping

ISTANBUL

Turkey’s banking watchdog has extended an approval process for all credit card holders to Jan. 31, 2018 to be able to continue to use their cards for online shopping, the head of the agency has announced.

The Banking Regulation and Supervision Agency (BDDK) in February stipulated that all credit card holders must give their approval to their lenders to continue to use these cards for online shopping.

The deadline for card holders to give their approval was first set as Aug. 17, but it was then extended to Dec. 31.

“Our aim is here to protect the credit card holder, not to block or hit online shopping. In an effort to achieve full integration of the banking systems, we have extended the deadline to Jan. 31, 2018 to meet demands both from lenders and card holders,” BDDK President Mehmet Ali Akben told Anadolu Agency on Dec. 28.

Akben noted the number of bank cards hit 192.2 million units by the end of November. Some 62.2 million of them are credit cards and the rest are debit cards.

He added that card holders had spent 90 billion Turkish Liras on online shopping in the first 11 months of the year.