Turkey’s first mobile payment application from Garanti Bank & Avea
Garanti Bank and Avea announced the mobile payment application at Cartes 2010 and now it is commercially available in Turkey. It is basically an antenna attached to the SIM card on which there is the PayPass application resides.
The SIM card used is the Gemalto’s N-Flex product. Garanti Bank provides the payment application(s) -there more than one, the default one is a pre-paid application, while Avea is the mobile network operator. The SIM comes with a MasterCard pre-paid application, but you are free to apply to more credit cards once you have the SIM activated. The STK menu allows the user to access the applications for activating and deactivating. You can apply for a pay-as-you-go or a post paid SIM. Post paid costs 40 TL (~20 EUR) and the pre-paid one costs 20 TL (~10 EUR)
It’s a smart move from Garanti Bank, which is clearly the market leader on the contactless space in the Turkish market. The pre-installed MasterCard pre-paid application on the SIM is also a nice touch since you do not have to go through the credit card application process. It’s sold through Ave’s distribution network since you have to activate the SIM first. The product is also backed with a bonus balance of 25 TL (~12 EUR) and 100 minutes air time if you apply before the new year. There is a nice video explaining the product to end users on the product’s official web site here. (Only in Turkish)
Another product announcement at Cartes was from Bank Asya, which is almost the same service but specific to mifare based Turkish Toll Payment system for highways.
With the add-on features and the successful start-up campaign, I personally find the product highly innovative based on the current hardware and software available in the market. As a wish, I am hoping these products to build the user acceptance of the mobile payments and make the bridge between the antenna chip to SWP chips.
