Local rails, faster payouts

An EU-based two-sided marketplace entered Türkiye with a clear promise to its sellers: reliable TRY payouts, low fees, and predictable timing. Reality disagreed. Early pilots leaned on cross-border wires and card-scheme push payouts. Fees stacked up, value dates drifted, and the ops team burned hours resolving returned payments and shortfalls. The turnaround came from embracing local payout rails—namely EFT for daytime bank-to-bank transfers and FAST for 24/7 instant credits—plus a disciplined sub-merchant onboarding and reporting model aligned with Turkish rules.

The initial state: slow value dates and expensive reversals

Before switching to local rails, the marketplace paid Turkish sellers in three imperfect ways:

• Cross-border SWIFT wires in EUR/USD to TR IBANs, leaving sellers with bank conversion spreads, intermediary charges, and 2–4 business day settlement windows.
• International card push-to-card payouts for smaller sellers—simple, but fee-heavy and inconsistent in acceptance for business accounts.
• Occasional correspondent-bank TRY wires from an EU account—faster than SWIFT chains at times, but still subject to fee opacity and cut-off friction.

Reconciliation was brittle. Instruction references vanished through correspondent chains; return codes were cryptic; and FX blow-outs forced the support team into refund-and-reissue loops.

Setting the targets

Finance, ops, and product agreed on specific outcomes:

• Payout timing: T+0 where feasible, T+1 as a ceiling for batch cycles.
• Net proceeds: reduce cost per payout by 80–150 bps versus the baseline mix.
• Automation: >95% auto-reconciled payouts, <0.5% return rate.
• Compliance: KYB/KYC aligned with MASAK expectations; clean audit trail for suspicious activity reviews and sanctions screening.

Understanding Turkey’s local rails in practice

Türkiye offers two complementary bank transfer systems that matter for payouts:

• EFT (Electronic Funds Transfer): the CBRT’s interbank system for domestic TRY transfers, operating on business days during published hours. It’s the workhorse for corporate payments, payroll, and bulk disbursements.
• FAST (24/7 instant): the CBRT’s real-time retail system enabling immediate TRY credits around the clock, with per-transaction limits that banks gradually raise; many banks advertise materially higher caps for corporate clients. For instant seller disbursements and exception handling, FAST shines.

Card-scheme settlement and domestic card clearing operate via BKM (Interbank Card Center), but for seller payouts to bank accounts the marketplace primarily relies on EFT for daytime batches and FAST for out-of-hours or urgent top-ups.

Payout model and architecture

The marketplace adopted a layered architecture with a local licensed partner and a settlement bank:

1. Funding & treasury. The marketplace funds a TRY payout account from its global collections (card/alternative payments) via FX conversion or local acquiring settlement. The balance policy maintains a rolling buffer sized to projected disbursements.
2. Sub-merchant ledger. Each seller has a virtual sub-ledger in TRY. Sales, fees, and adjustments post in real time; the ledger drives eligibility for disbursement windows.
3. Rail selection engine.
   • EFT for scheduled daytime bulk payouts, optimizing cost and batched reconciliation.
   • FAST for instant, small-ticket payouts, out-of-hours releases, and exceptions (e.g., a seller needing cash before a holiday or to resolve a carrier surcharge).
4. Beneficiary validation. IBAN format checks, name/IBAN matching, and bank code validations run before first payout. Failed matches park in a queue for seller remediation.
5. Webhooks & reconciliation. Provider webhooks confirm credit; a payout ID and seller ID travel with the payment, closing the loop automatically in the sub-ledger and ERP.
6. Returns handling. Returned credits are auto-posted back to the seller ledger with a reason code; the payout engine retries after remediation or routes via the alternate rail.

KYB, AML, and data discipline

Türkiye’s financial intelligence unit MASAK sets expectations around onboarding, monitoring, and Suspicious Transaction Reports (STRs). The marketplace, working with its local partner, defined a lean but complete data model: verified company registration, tax number, beneficial ownership, line-of-business, and bank letters for the payout account. Rule-based alerts capture anomalies like spikes in low-value sales followed by immediate withdrawals, or repeated payout attempts to newly changed IBANs. When thresholds trip, the case system prompts enhanced due diligence and, if warranted, STR filing through the partner’s regulated channel.

Scheduling strategy: when to pay and how often

Seller sentiment improved most when timing became predictable. The marketplace standardized on:

• Daily EFT batch with a clear cut-off that aligns to CBRT operating hours, ensuring same-day credits for files submitted before the cut-off and T+1 for later files.
• FAST top-ups 24/7 for expedited releases, weekend needs, and remediation of missed files. FAST also serves small sellers who opt into an “Instant Payouts” plan with a nominal fee to cover instant-rail costs.

The mix created a low-cost base for the bulk of volume while delivering a premium experience for time-sensitive cohorts.

Limits, amounts, and fragmentation

FAST is subject to per-transaction limits that vary by bank and segment; many banks publicly advertise higher operational caps for corporate profiles (e.g., some list TL 300k–500k tiers). The payout engine fragments a large release into compliant chunks when routing via FAST and falls back to EFT for amounts that exceed policy limits. Sellers see a single settlement line in their dashboard, while the underlying transaction fan-out stays internal.

Exception handling that actually works

Three high-friction cases demanded careful flows:

• Name/IBAN mismatches. First-payout validation reduces risk, but mismatches still occur after bank account changes. The engine soft-fails, notifies the seller, and exposes a document re-verification path; support can trigger a one-time FAST micro-credit with a code for confirmation.
• Bank holidays and half days. EFT batches respect CBRT calendars and published hours. On half working days, the cut-off pulls forward; after hours, the engine pivots to FAST.
• Negative balances and clawbacks. Returns and disputes debit the seller ledger automatically; if a payout has already gone out, future disbursements net against the balance with transparent statements.

Data, reporting, and tax fields sellers expect

Large Turkish sellers, especially incorporated merchants, expect clean statements:

• Payout statements include IBANs, value dates, net amounts after marketplace fees, and references that map back to order ranges.
• File exports (CSV/Excel) adhere to predictable column orders to feed accounting software.
• The marketplace stores payout confirmations and bank return messages for audit trails.
• For enterprises, the system captures and reflects vergi no (tax number) and registered company names consistently across finance docs.

Risk controls tailored to payouts

Payouts are fraud targets when they mimic cash-out. Controls that mattered:

• Velocity and volume caps by new seller, by day/week, and per method; staged increases after performance milestones.
• Device and session binding for payout-change requests; dual confirmation and cooling-off periods on IBAN changes.
• Geofencing and sanctions screening on seller entities and counterparties.
• Anomaly detection on sales-to-payout latency—fast cash-out with atypical order patterns triggers review.

Where alerts lead to suspicion, the partner’s regulated entity manages STR filings to MASAK per the rulebook, with the marketplace supplying supporting logs and ledger evidence.

Results after three months

With the hybrid EFT/FAST model live, metrics shifted decisively:

• Speed: 83–88% of payouts landed same-day via EFT; another 9–12% cleared within minutes via FAST outside banking hours. Edge cases slipped to T+1 when cut-offs were missed.
• Cost per payout: unit economics improved by 110–170 bps versus the legacy mix of SWIFT and push-to-card, depending on ticket size.
• Return rate: fell below 0.4% after beneficiary validation matured.
• Support tickets: payout-related contacts per 1,000 sellers dropped by ~60%, driven by predictable value dates and better error messaging.

(Performance bands are specific to this rollout; different seller mixes and bank distributions will shift the numbers.)

Treasury and FX: keeping TRY where it counts

TRY funding is the lifeblood of local payouts. The marketplace adopted simple, defensible policies:

• Short-duration FX. Collections in EUR/USD convert to TRY in measured tranches to maintain 7–10 days of forecasted payout needs.
• Rate discipline. Execution reports log achieved rates against independent benchmarks for CFO review.
• Liquidity guardrails. If TRY falls below a floor, the engine automatically reduces “Instant Payouts” availability to priority sellers and raises alerts to treasury.

Implementation timeline the team could keep

A realistic plan beat perfection:

• Weeks 1–3: partner selection, API sandboxing, payout file specs, and first KYB templates.
• Weeks 4–6: seller-facing flows, IBAN capture/verification, ledger integration, and reconciliation webhooks.
• Weeks 7–8: pilot with 100 sellers; monitor return codes, bank distribution, and FAST/EFT split.
• Week 9+: scale-up, enable instant payouts as an opt-in, and tune limits and cut-offs.

Why this worked

• Rail fit-for-purpose. EFT handled cost-efficient bulk during CBRT hours; FAST solved urgency and off-hours gaps.
• Data over paperwork. Clean references and beneficiary validation eliminated most returns before they happened.
• Compliance woven in. MASAK-aligned onboarding and alerting were part of day-one design, not bolted on later.
• Seller-first communication. Clear cut-offs, visible value dates, and precise error reasons built trust faster than fee discounts ever did.

Where the playbook extends

The same blueprint travels well: keep instant rails for experience and batch rails for economics; push strong KYB/monitoring to the edge; and treat funding buffers and FX as a product. For Türkiye specifically, expect continued FAST adoption and evolving limits across banks, while EFT remains the dependable daytime backbone for corporate payouts