Undoubtedly, Turkey has a lot to offer when it comes to its payment system, which is typical for countries that have experienced sustained periods of inflation and therefore put a premium on the efficiency of its payments infrastructure. Yet it is much less obvious whether the prevailing models will also contribute much to digital financial inclusion, as they often suffer from challenges in customer adoption and therefore reach only a minority of the population.

As mentioned in our first blog in this series, 43% of adults generally and a disappointing 55% of female adults lack access to an account at a formal financial institution, so even if most people might have a financial access point close by, many of them still lack an account to transact through. The question is whether innovations in the payments sphere can contribute to closing this gap.