The Central Bank of the Republic of Türkiye (TCMB) has announced that it has completed the second-stage application evaluation process under the call for participation in the Digital Turkish Lira Project ecosystem.
According to the statement published on TCMB’s website, the project invites organizations from the finance and technology sectors to develop innovative products and use cases compatible with the digital Turkish lira. In the first stage, held between September 4 and October 15, 2025, a total of 85 project applications were submitted, with 16 banks and 25 payment and electronic money institutions taking part.
Following TCMB’s evaluation, 51 projects that met the first-stage criteria advanced to the second stage, with second-stage applications carried out between November 13 and December 12, 2025.
The statement said that following an evaluation of the documents and presentations submitted by applicants during the second stage, a total of 23 projects — belonging to 12 banks and 6 payment and electronic money institutions — were selected to move on to the third stage. It was noted that development work and sandbox testing will be carried out for these projects during the third stage.
The statement also noted that 6 projects were placed on hold following the second-stage evaluation, and that these projects could be included in the third stage at a later date.
Regarding the category breakdown of the 23 projects advancing to the third stage, the statement noted that a single project can be associated with more than one category, and provided the following distribution: 15 projects in Tokenization, 17 in Programmable Payments, 7 in User-Sovereign Identity, 15 in Interoperability with Existing Systems, and 1 in Machine-to-Machine Payments.
TCMB said in its statement that it continues its work in line with its goal of fostering public-private sector cooperation in the context of financial technologies and the digital Turkish lira.
