The Truth Behind the Haggling for Cash; the Card Commission

In the morning the taxi driver says “pay cash, brother, the bank takes a commission”. In the evening the shopkeeper haggles; “this price by card, a discount if you pay cash”. This dialogue is by now the sound recording of the country. And that sound is not recorded in the shopkeeper’s till; it appears in the bank’s balance sheet itself.

Law No. 5464 prohibits charging the customer a commission surcharge. The 2026 tax rules rain penalties of TRY 150,000 on receipts for which no document is issued. The consumer suffers, the shopkeeper is squeezed, enforcement is harsh. So who is comfortable in this equation? A single actor; the bank, which produces nothing but intermediation.

Because the bank does not sell you a service, it becomes a partner in your turnover. A TRY 200 toasted sandwich and a TRY 2,000 shirt use the same infrastructure; the cost of the data passing through the server is the same. But because the commission is a percentage, every time inflation climbs the bank’s income multiplies with zero effort and zero investment. Türkiye’s inflation becomes the bank’s business model. In instalment and value-date transactions the burden exceeds 20 percent; the shopkeeper hands over a fifth of the product he sells to an intermediary that produces nothing.

The EU settled this matter in 2015. The Interchange Fee Regulation fixed the interchange fee at 0.3 percent for credit cards and 0.2 percent for debit cards; PSD2 prohibited passing the commission on to the consumer. We are still circling in the 2 to 4 percent band, and this is called a “market condition”. It is no market condition; it is the name of the space the Banking Regulation and Supervision Agency has left empty.

The solution is obvious and is merely a matter of political will. First, abolish the percentage commission and introduce a fixed flat fee per transaction; let the bank earn according to the service it provides rather than the price of the product. Second, make the integration of the Central Bank’s Open Banking and FAST infrastructure into cash registers compulsory; the infrastructure is ready, the only thing missing is the courage to narrow the banks’ rent corridor.

Digital payment is a necessity of the transparent economy. But the bill for that necessity should be charged neither to the consumer’s pocket nor to the shopkeeper’s profit margin. Setting a limit to the intermediary’s appetite is a primary duty of the state.