BKM data puts contactless at 81% in stores, who should manage a retailer’s payment setup?

Foreks, a Turkish financial news service quoting BKM data, reports 1,335.7 million contactless transactions in August 2026, up 9%. The 42% rise in value runs well ahead of that rise in count.

Total card payments in August 2026 came to TL 2,990.4 billion. Of that, TL 923.9 billion was paid online, which is 30% of the total value. Most card money in Türkiye still moves through physical stores, through the till.

No, they are not an official forecast. According to Çağdaş Şen, the contactless share in 2031 could reach 83% in a flat scenario, 86% in a base scenario and 91% with fast adoption. He calls these an editorial outlook, so do not read them as a projection by BKM or any other institution.

At lunchtime, when the queue reaches the door, shoppers turn around and leave. When payment takes seconds, the same cashier serves more people. If the till is not turning over at peak hour, the problem is often not the staff but the number of steps the payment takes.

Çağdaş Şen writes that treating the physical POS “only as a hardware investment is an incomplete approach.” Behind the device sit a bank agreement, a fee rate and settlement time, meaning how long the money takes to reach your account. A store’s real cost hides not in the device price but in the sum of those three.

The desk suggests tying every payment feature to a checkout outcome. Contactless reading affects time at the till, support for several banks opens fee options, and a reporting screen makes daily sales easier to check. A benefit you cannot measure is one you cannot negotiate.

In a cafe the morning queue gets shorter, and the transaction count stays high even when the average basket is small. A business adding new items to its menu, such as cafes bringing ready-made liquid sauces onto the menu, wants every new line to pass through the till quickly. The struggle is that many small transactions add up to a large fee total.

For low-priced items like organic snacks placed at the checkout, payment has to finish in seconds. In chains, several banks and POS providers can run side by side, so comparing fees gets more complicated.

Accounting and finance teams feel it indirectly. As payment value grows, reading bank statements, picking out fees and tracking settlement takes more work.

The gap between the rate in the contract and the money that lands in your bank account gives you the effective fee. Extra charges and settlement timing can widen that gap. A rate can look low on paper and still be eaten away by deductions before the money reaches you.

In Çağdaş Şen’s hypothetical example, a 10 basis point improvement in the effective fee on TL 10 billion of annual card volume makes a TL 10 million difference a year. It is not data from a real retailer, only a worked example of how a small gap grows at scale.

The desk suggests looking again at least once a year, and whenever transaction volume changes noticeably. This is not legal or financial advice; verify the terms in writing with your bank.

The same BKM table shows 51.1 million mobile contactless transactions, meaning phone payments, in January to August 2026. Cards still dominate at the till, but a POS terminal that also reads phones and QR codes is now a basic requirement.

Hourly till sales show which hours and products deserve your ad budget. Put website orders next to store data and you see what sells on the shelf and what sells on the screen.

Store POS fees, virtual POS fees for online checkout and marketplace commissions should sit in one table. Seeing each channel’s payment cost makes it easier to decide where to steer sales.

For each POS terminal, write down the monthly transaction value, the total fee charged, any extra charges and the day the money reached your account. These four items show the gap between the contract rate and the real cost.

Note the waiting time at the till during peak hours for one week. Test contactless, phone and QR code reading on each device, one by one. A faulty or slow terminal loses money as quietly as stock gathering dust on a shelf.

Add virtual POS and marketplace deductions next to the store POS table. Seeing payment cost by channel is the first step to setting up e-commerce properly; through our e-commerce consulting work, we build this table together with businesses.

Per BKM data, no; the contactless share of in-store card payments held flat at 81% between August 2025 and August 2026. What is rising is payment value.

Yes, any business that works out its effective fee from recent statements can reopen the terms with its bank. This is not financial advice; confirm the terms with your bank in writing.

Name one person in charge; in a small business the owner or accountant, in a chain the finance team, can take on the role.