BKM Express, a new approach to wallet world

BKM is the national switch, clearing and settlement processor and the regulating body for the card payments space in Turkey. BKM was founded by the Turkish banks in 1990 and since then, BKM played a huge role in the development of card payment systems in Turkey.

I have personally involved many part of the story and yet I am again part of another innovative project of BKM. It’s called BKM Express and it sure will play an express role in card payments of Turkey. Online payments in Turkey is on the rise and BKM is playing an invaluable part in this game. The online payments ecosystem, banks, customers, merchants, service providers, solution providers will utilize this product eventually and all players will win.

Basically it is an online wallet where people can store credit and debit cards securely for making payments on online merchant without the need of entering card details each time. This prevents sharing the card numbers with merchants which still many people are not comfortable with. Enrollment is also very user friendly, authentication is processed via text message via the issuer bank which is the very same user experience with the online banking logon. (mandatory for online banking)

From the merchants’ perspective it means integrating once and avoiding all the hassle of technical problems with each bank’s online POS software services. BKM Express also supports the trademark Turkish concept “installment payments” with credit cards. Not just installments, but loyalty program of each bank is supported during checkouts. There is even the option of submitting delivery and invoice addresses to merchant without the need of keying in each time by the customer. Turkish card holders are already familiar with the 3D Secure context and now this is the perfect complimentary for the online payments.

Sure it seems quite similar to Paypal, but this is the first national online wallet initiative in the world -as fas as I know. There are some enhancements over Paypal; it is a product of banks’ platform and it supports installments of each merchant’s offering (includes more than one in most cases) You can add both credit and debit cards, but you will be forced to use a 3D Secure payment which is the national regulation for debit cards.

Currently 9 banks have been certified but this covers almost %80 of the total card market. Pretty good start! It is now under presentation phase with limited number of merchants but BKM is working hard to integrate with more merchants everyday.

Of course mobile application will be coming and it will be a complete solution for the Turkish card holders for an online payment experience.