Istanbul Fintech Week 2026, organized with contributions from BEX Digital Wallet, will host Nobel laureate economist Prof. Dr. Daron Acemoğlu on its main stage on October 6. The event will bring together the ideas, technologies and decision-makers shaping the future of finance in Istanbul.

Istanbul Fintech Week, Türkiye’s first and largest global financial technology event, will be held at Hilton Istanbul Maslak on October 5-7, 2026. Under the theme “Smart, Embedded and Tokenized,” the event will bring together bankers, fintech executives, investors and regulators from Türkiye, the Middle East, Central Asia and Europe. The three-day program will address the transformation spanning AI, payments, digital banking, sustainable finance and digital assets, together with the figures shaping that transformation.

Who is technology working for?

Winner of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Economics and an Institute Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Daron Acemoğlu brings a distinct perspective to this discussion through his work on the economic and social consequences of technological progress. In Power and Progress, co-authored with Simon Johnson, he argues that technology does not spread prosperity on its own — rather, choices about the direction of technology determine who wins and who loses.

Will AI replace humans, or will it enhance what humans can do? The framework Acemoğlu has developed on automation, employment and income distribution also points to a fundamental question for the financial sector as it integrates AI into its business models: who will the transformation create value for?

Acemoğlu, who will deliver the closing keynote of the AI in Finance Summit on October 6, will be available to all attendees holding an Istanbul Fintech Week ticket. That same evening, Acemoğlu will join senior industry executives in a closed session at the IFW Leadership Forum. Separate from the general event ticket, the Forum will be open only to senior executives whose applications have been approved.

Central banks and regulators on the same platform

At the invitation of the Central Bank of the Republic of Türkiye, the event will also be attended by senior representatives from central banks abroad, bringing the development of financial technologies together with the regulatory agenda while creating space for cross-border dialogue and cooperation.

Istanbul Fintech Week Co-Founder Demet Zübeyiroğlu commented on this year’s focus for the event: “The future of finance will be shaped not just by new technologies, but by the decisions we make about those technologies today. How AI will be used and who the transformation will create value for are now shared agenda items for the sector. That’s why we’re bringing together Prof. Daron Acemoğlu, central bank representatives, regulators and industry leaders on the same platform. At Istanbul Fintech Week, we won’t just be discussing where technology is headed — we’ll be discussing what kind of financial future we want to build with these technologies.”

The transformation of finance, across five summits

The program — consisting of the Sustainable Finance, Payments, AI in Finance, Digital Banking and Digital Assets summits — will feature closed-door roundtable discussions alongside the main stage sessions.

The Payments Summit will open with a session led by Interbank Card Center (BKM) General Manager Ozan Deniz. Garanti BBVA Payment Systems General Manager Kerem Orbay will take part in a conversation addressing the embedding of payments into commerce. Cross-border payment infrastructure will be discussed in a panel featuring Ripple’s Middle East and Africa General Manager Reece Merrick. Remitly CEO Sebastian J. Gunningham is also among the event’s speakers.

How AI is transforming risk management and cybersecurity at financial institutions will be addressed in a keynote by Cognitive Finance Group CEO Clara Durodié. Bridge API CEO Anna Maj, who will deliver the opening keynote of the Digital Banking Summit, will focus on banking’s shift toward modular architectures.

Is AI a reinvention for banking, or a fundamental disruption? This question will be addressed on October 7 in the “The Intelligent Bank: Reinvention or Disruption?” panel at the Digital Banking Summit, featuring Akbank Deputy General Manager for Digital Solutions and Strategy Şebnem Dağ Güven. The growth potential of digital banking will also be among the program’s discussion topics. A panel featuring Hüseyin Demirhisar, who oversees global operations at Bunq, one of Europe’s largest digital banks, will assess whether branchless banking has achieved scale. Having brought together more than 17,000 attendees from over 60 countries since 2019, Istanbul Fintech Week has hosted more than 630 speakers to date. This year, the event will once again bring the international dialogue of the financial world to Istanbul.

Support from leading institutions in the financial ecosystem

Istanbul Fintech Week 2026, organized with contributions from BEX Digital Wallet, has BKM Express as its title sponsor. Garanti BBVA is a Black Sponsor; Akbank LAB, TROY and Türkiye İş Bankası are Diamond Sponsors; and Ripple and Priority Pass support the event as C-Suite Sponsors. The Association of Payment and Electronic Money Institutions (TÖDEB) is taking part as a strategic partner, while Invest in Türkiye, under the Presidential Investment Office, is also among the event’s supporters.

For the program, speakers and attendance information: istanbulfintechweek.com

Mastercard has published its report titled “The Economic Contributions of Digital Payments to Development in Türkiye,” presenting data on the contribution digital payments make to the Turkish economy. According to European Central Bank (ECB) data as of the end of June 2025, Türkiye overtook Spain in the number of credit cards, becoming Europe’s largest market.

According to the report, Türkiye has 142 million credit cards and 319 million debit cards, including prepaid cards, while annual card payments reached 24.1 trillion lira in 2025.

Prepared by Mastercard Türkiye Consulting Services, the report examines three main areas: rising tax revenues driven by a decline in informality, contributions to household consumption, and service exports supporting tourism revenues.

The study also examines the cost of cash usage to the public sector, banks, companies and consumers.

While digital payment penetration in Türkiye stands at 69 percent, closing in on the 95 percent level seen in mature markets holds the potential to further increase the economic contribution — an outcome for which cooperation across the entire ecosystem, including the public sector, banks, payment institutions, payment schemes and fintechs, is important.

As digital payments support household consumption through a fast and alternative payment experience, calculations adapted to Turkish data show they created an impact of approximately 1.5 trillion lira on household consumption in 2025.

The highest contribution was seen in travel, at 546 billion lira, while the restaurant sector ranked second with 427 billion lira. Furniture and electronics, clothing, and accommodation were also among the areas where digital payments made a notable contribution.

The share of card payments in household payments reached 54 percent for personal cards in 2025, rising to 69 percent when commercial cards are included.

The increasingly widespread card payment infrastructure in Türkiye is making it easier for foreign tourists to spend money, making the country more attractive to tourists.

Tourism revenues rose from $7.6 billion in 2000 to nearly $65 billion in 2025 — an increase of roughly 8.5 times — while the share of card payments in tourism revenues rose from 15 percent to approximately 38 percent.

As a result, digital payments contributed 388 billion lira, or $9.8 billion, to tourism revenues in 2025.

“Over the past 30 years, Türkiye has undergone a transformation in digital payments held up as a global example”

The report, which also calculates the costs cash usage imposes on the economy, estimates that the direct cost of banknote printing to the Central Bank of the Republic of Türkiye (CBRT) was 4.4 billion lira in 2025, while the cost of cash circulation to banks exceeded 65 billion lira.

The cash handling cost for companies approached 34 billion lira, while the total cost passed on to consumers is estimated to have exceeded 8.1 billion lira.

By ensuring sales are recorded, digital payments increase transparency and also support tax collection.

The total contribution of these payments to Value Added Tax (VAT), Special Consumption Tax (SCT), Corporate Tax and Income Tax items reached 574 billion lira in 2025, an amount corresponding to approximately 5 percent of Türkiye’s total tax revenues.

The impact on reducing informality is particularly notable among micro, small and medium-sized enterprises, with card payments made at these businesses accounting for approximately 40 percent of total card payments in Türkiye.

Highlighting AI-assisted commerce as one of the new areas of transformation in the payments ecosystem, the report reveals that AI agents carrying out product search, comparison, purchasing and post-purchase processes are adding a new decision-making layer to commerce.

Through solutions that bring together tokenization, trusted agent verification mechanisms and AI platforms, Mastercard aims to enable these transactions to take place securely and at scale.

The company, which is developing AI-powered shopping assistant solutions together with financial institutions in Türkiye, views Türkiye as a strategic priority in this area.

Mastercard has been supporting this transformation in Türkiye for 30 years with a portfolio spanning card products, digital payment solutions and value-added services.

Masterpass has reached 45 million users in Türkiye, while the company’s card products along with the Priceless and MTR platforms offer benefits and experiences for cardholders.

Tap on Phone, meanwhile, facilitates more than 10 million transactions per month through over 200,000 terminals across Türkiye, while the company contributes to the secure and sustainable growth of the payments ecosystem through MasterKOBİ, contactless and mobile payment infrastructure in public transportation, Mastercard Send, and cybersecurity solutions.

Commenting in the statement, Mastercard Türkiye and Azerbaijan General Manager Onur Faydacı said the company was proud to contribute to the development of the ecosystem through secure, innovative and inclusive solutions.

Faydacı emphasized that the company will continue working to make the digital payments ecosystem more inclusive going forward and to strengthen Türkiye’s leading position in next-generation areas such as AI-assisted commerce, adding:

“Over the past 30 years, Türkiye has undergone a transformation in digital payments that is held up as a global example. The report shows that digital payments are not just a payment method — they are an important driver of development, from economic growth to a stronger registered economy, from tourism revenues to business efficiency.”

New services from Visa’s Consulting and Analytics unit are helping institutions identify their most critical security vulnerabilities and act before malicious actors do. The new version of Visa Vulnerability Agentic Harness (VVAH) extends AI-powered cyber risk management into a process that spans from vulnerability detection through to verification of remediation.

Visa continues to expand its cybersecurity portfolio to help institutions more effectively identify and remediate security vulnerabilities. As part of this effort, Visa has released a new version of its open-source, model-agnostic framework, Visa Vulnerability Agentic Harness (VVAH).

The new version aims to significantly reduce institutions’ Mean Time to Adapt (MTTA) — the time between the discovery of attack paths and the remediation of those vulnerabilities. For some vulnerabilities, this timeframe can be reduced from weeks to hours.

Visa is also expanding its Visa Consulting and Analytics (VCA) Cybersecurity Advisory Practice to help institutions better manage the evolving threat landscape. The new advisory services help institutions assess their risks, prioritize vulnerabilities that need to be addressed, and strengthen their resilience against the changing threat environment.

Visa Chief Technology Officer Rajat Taneja said, “AI is shortening the time between the discovery of a vulnerability and its exploitation. That means defense teams need a much faster and more reliable path to act. By advancing VVAH and expanding our cybersecurity advisory capabilities, we’re helping institutions move faster from insight to remediation — while also helping them build resilience in a threat landscape increasingly shaped by AI.”

VVAH’s scope is expanding

Released following Visa’s participation in Project Glasswing, Anthropic’s cybersecurity initiative focused on advanced AI systems, VVAH helps security teams detect vulnerabilities using AI, assess the likelihood of those vulnerabilities being exploited, and systematically present the results.

The new version extends this process beyond the discovery stage, also enabling the remediation of vulnerabilities and verification of the fixes applied.

Key improvements in the new version include:

Feedback-driven remediation refinement: When a fix fails verification, teams receive feedback on what still needs to be corrected, so they don’t have to restart the process from scratch.

Flexible model selection: Institutions can now use approved Anthropic models and OpenAI models, among many other AI models, purely through configuration — without any code changes.

Greater visibility: Optional real-time progress views provide greater transparency during long-running scanning and vulnerability remediation processes.

The framework helps institutions detect, assess, remediate, and verify fixes for security vulnerabilities.

New cybersecurity services

To help institutions translate findings and insights into business processes, Visa Consulting and Analytics is also offering three new cybersecurity advisory services developed from Visa’s AI-powered cybersecurity experience:

AI Cyber Leadership Education — covers executive training, workshops, and Visa University certificate programs led by Visa’s AI and cybersecurity experts. These programs are built on Visa’s expertise in AI and cybersecurity, helping leaders prepare for a threat landscape increasingly shaped by AI.

VVAH-Informed Cybersecurity Maturity Assessment — helps institutions use the VVAH framework to identify and assess potential security vulnerabilities, understand risk areas, and prioritize vulnerabilities that need to be addressed.

VVAH Cyber Risk Prioritisation and Roadmap — provides institutions with strategic guidance on evaluating findings, prioritizing vulnerabilities that need remediation, and building a long-term cyber risk management roadmap.

Visa Türkiye General Manager Samile Mümin said, “AI is accelerating both cyberattacks and the detection of cyber risks. In this environment, it matters just as much for institutions to be able to see the risks they face as it does for them to take concrete steps to remediate vulnerabilities faster. Through the cybersecurity advisory services we’ve developed, we’re bringing together the experience we’ve gained from Project Glasswing, our open-source VVAH solutions, and our expertise in payment systems across Europe. We’re helping institutions focus on their most significant risks, strengthen their response capabilities against those risks, and build the resilience needed to keep pace with a threat landscape being rapidly reshaped by AI.”

Growing interest in VVAH across the cybersecurity world

Since VVAH was made available as open source in June 2026, it has been downloaded by tens of thousands of developers worldwide, reflecting growing interest in AI-powered vulnerability management.

Visa is also involved in industry initiatives supporting the development of secure and open applications amid the rapid pace of progress in AI.

As part of NVIDIA’s Open Secure AI Alliance initiative, Visa is making VVAH available to developers as a model-agnostic framework. Visa is also working alongside other institutions under IBM and Red Hat’s Project Lightwell initiative to strengthen the security of open-source software.

Istanbul Fintech Week, Türkiye’s first and largest global financial technology event, will open its doors at Hilton Istanbul Maslak on October 5-7, 2026. Applications are underway for the fourth edition of the Pioneers of Digital Finance Awards, organized in partnership with KPMG Türkiye as part of the event. The program, which launched in 2023 with the participation of the Presidency Finance Office by honoring seven institutions, has since received more than 100 applications and brought over 20 banks and fintechs to the stage.

APPLICATION DEADLINE: SEPTEMBER 18

Banks and fintechs developing a new financial technology solution, digital banking service, or financial inclusion initiative can complete their applications at istanbulfintechweek.com/awards. The final application deadline for this year’s Pioneers of Digital Finance Awards has been set as September 18.

CENTRAL BANKS IN THE ROOM TOO

Organized with contributions from BEX Digital Wallet, this year’s supporters of Istanbul Fintech Week 2026 also include TÖDEB and Invest in Türkiye. The participation of representatives from the Central Bank of the Republic of Türkiye as well as central banks from around the world takes the awards ceremony beyond a mere industry gathering.

WHAT DO WINNERS RECEIVE?

Brands deemed worthy of an award under the Pioneers of Digital Finance Awards will be announced at a ceremony to be held at Hilton Istanbul Maslak on October 6, 2026, in front of thousands of industry professionals. Award-winning projects will receive an award bearing the KPMG name and gain the opportunity to share their story with a wide audience and access the region’s strongest fintech network.

This year’s program at Istanbul Fintech Week, which brings together fintech ecosystems across Europe, the Middle East and Africa, is structured around the themes of sustainable finance, AI in finance, payments, digital banking, digital assets — tokenization and stablecoins — and a leadership forum.

EIGHT CATEGORIES, TWO SEPARATE COMPETITIONS

On the banking side, there are four award categories. Institutions that pave the way and set direction in digital banking compete in the Pioneer category; those placing AI and other emerging technologies at the center of their products compete in Visionary; those growing alongside the ecosystem through APIs and fintech partnerships compete in Collaborative; and projects that bring financial services to broader audiences are evaluated in the Financial Inclusion category.

There are also four award categories on the fintech side. Companies that originated in Türkiye and have grown beyond its borders compete in Global Fintech; startups no more than three years old compete in Emerging Fintech; those bringing genuine innovation to the market compete in Innovative Fintech; and those expanding financial inclusion compete in the Financial Inclusion category.

LEADING INDUSTRY FIGURES ON THE JURY

The 2026 jury is made up of leading figures from both the banking and fintech sides of the industry, with the panel expanded this year. Two separate juries, convened for banks and fintechs respectively, evaluate each submitted project directly. Every application is scored using a 100-point framework consisting of common and category-specific questions, with the top three finalists determined in each category. Applying does not only mean a chance at an award — it also means having the project reviewed by these industry figures.

COLENDI AND TARFIN HAVE TAKEN THE STAGE TOO

In previous years, Pioneers of Digital Finance award winners on the banking side have included Türkiye İş Bankası, Akbank, Kuveyt Türk, Fibabanka and QNB Finansbank. On the fintech side, companies that have expanded abroad such as Colendi, Sipay and United Payment have taken the stage, alongside Tarfin, Cenoa, FaturaLab, TeamSec, Mall IQ, AIATUS, GTech and Garanti BBVA Kripto.

The fact that winners have also included teams still in their growth stage shows that the award is not limited to a single scale of company.

Istanbul Fintech Week Co-Founder Demet Zübeyiroğlu commented on the program: “When I look at this list, what I see isn’t a scoreboard — it’s a trajectory. Some of the names we’ve seen on stage were startups nobody knew a few years ago. A team that applies gets to present its project to a table made up of the industry’s most senior figures — even if they don’t win the award.”

KPMG Türkiye Fintech and Digital Finance Leader Sinem Cantürk commented on the evaluation process: “For four years, we’ve been asking the same question: what has really changed in this sector? What we see when reading the applications isn’t a list of technologies — it’s the story of teams that have grown their business. That’s also why we expanded the jury this year — more perspectives means a more accurate evaluation.”