Seven Licences Revoked: Turkey's Central Bank Gets Serious About Fintech Standards

In the twelve months between March 2025 and February 2026, the Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey (TCMB) revoked the operating licences of seven electronic money institutions. The pace is unprecedented: in the previous five years combined, the central bank had revoked a total of three. The acceleration is not evidence of a sector in crisis. It is evidence of a regulator that has decided the sector has matured enough to be held to higher standards. Three of the revocations (Ozan Elektronik Para, IQ Money, and Paybull) involved firms linked by prosecutors to illegal online betting networks. These cases, supported by MASAK (Turkey's financial intelligence unit) reports and court orders, demonstrate that the enforcement pipeline between financial intelligence, prosecution, and regulatory action is functioning as designed. The central bank did not wait for convictions. It moved on the basis of credible intelligence, pulling licences before the firms could process additional illicit flows. That is decisive, not reactive.

The other four revocations involve smaller firms with fewer users, and the Official Gazette notices cite Article 18 of the Law on Payment and Securities Settlement Systems, a provision that allows revocation for failure to comply with licence conditions or regulatory requirements. The notices do not specify the particular violations. This has drawn comment from some quarters, but the practice is consistent with global central bank norms. The Bank of England, the European Central Bank, and the Federal Reserve routinely decline to publish granular enforcement details when matters are subject to ongoing regulatory processes, pending litigation, or parallel investigations by other agencies. The TCMB's use of Article 16 of Turkey's Right to Information Law to withhold specifics (citing ongoing regulatory processes) mirrors the approach taken by the FCA in the UK, which publishes final enforcement notices only after all proceedings are concluded. The restrained disclosure protects the integrity of continuing supervisory work and avoids prejudicing any related legal proceedings.

The bigger picture is what matters. Turkey's fintech sector grew at extraordinary speed between 2019 and 2024, with the number of licensed electronic money institutions roughly tripling. That growth was largely enabled by a licensing regime that prioritised market entry and innovation. The cost of that approach was predictable: some licensees were inadequately capitalised, poorly governed, or, in the three betting-linked cases, actively criminal. The TCMB's current enforcement wave is the correction. Seven revocations in twelve months is not a sign that the licensing framework failed. It is a sign that the oversight framework caught up. Customer balances at the four non-betting-linked firms, collectively several hundred million lira, were managed through the TMSF transition process, and no users lost access to their funds. For a sector that holds deposits for millions of Turkish citizens, the central bank's willingness to revoke licences (quickly, and without deference to the political noise that inevitably follows) is the strongest signal yet that Turkey is serious about building a fintech market that can sustain institutional trust over the long term.