Turkey has all the time been a bridge between continents, however whereas many of the nation’s landmass is situated on the Asian facet of the continental divide, Turkish corporations look extra in the direction of Europe for enterprise alternatives, leveraging tariff-free commerce offers inked with the European Union and the UK.
Germany, for instance, is the nation’s largest commerce associate by export worth, with the U.Okay. and Italy additionally making the highest 5, in accordance with knowledge from the Turkish Ministry of Commerce.
But it surely’s not simply Turkey seeking to its European neighbors for alternatives, Hakan Gonca, founder and CEO of Turkish banking app Norma, informed PYMNTS in an interview.
“Corporations in Europe see Turkey as an opportunistic market to rent good engineers particularly,” he mentioned. “Now we have a very good engineering schooling system [and] individuals in European markets are extra conscious of it than different locations, [which is why] they’ve taken the steps to recruit from Turkey.”
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He added that with better alternatives for distant work, many in Turkey have opted to work for worldwide firms the place they will earn a better wage as European firms more and more acknowledge the potential of the Turkish workforce.
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Gonca additionally famous the best way that tendencies in Turkish banking have tended to align with developments in Europe, pointing to the regulatory similarities between Turkey and Europe.
“We had open banking regulation [come into effect] firstly of final yr, and on the finish of this yr, banks are speculated to have opened all of the APIs required by way of the central financial institution’s fee processing heart to licensed firms,” he defined.
However strikes to open up software programming interfaces (APIs) forward of the obligatory requirement is a robust indication of market-driven innovation going down within the banking ecosystem that’s serving to drive development for FinTechs like Norma, Gonda famous.
“Even earlier than [open banking regulation], there have been a whole lot of firms, and a whole lot of banks, already opening up their APIs for a number of the fundamental performance [such as] accessing and viewing accounts within the final one or two years,” he mentioned.
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Norma’s platform supplies freelancers and small companies with a enterprise checking account, a degree of sale resolution and a monetary toolbox to handle their enterprise and funds.
In accordance with Gonca, every totally different enterprise processes “one sort of info,” however finally the purpose is to deal with companies’ ache factors “from the place the cash begins and finishes to the place you pay your taxes.”
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Leveraging open banking, the Turkish agency goals to ship monetary instruments and companies to its clients in a extra seamless manner, partnering with FinTechs like Finekra, a neighborhood startup that’s built-in with banks and accounting packages and allows customers to view and handle all their account actions and financial institution balances in a single place.
Norma has additionally developed a market the place customers can entry companies and instruments to assist them run their enterprise, however he mentioned the emphasis will all the time be on integration: “We assist them buy their advantages [and] insurance coverage with companions who already provide these out there.”
Shifting ahead, Gonca pinned his hopes on partnerships to assist Norma develop its footprint throughout Europe, which presents big alternatives for development because of superior laws and passporting throughout the eurozone.
“You may simply get a Banking-as-a-Service partnership [in Europe] and open banking is way simpler [there] than in different markets,” he mentioned.
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