The Power of Ecosystems in Payments By Professor Selim Yazici (@SelimYazici) Payments might be the most innovative, the most valuable hence the most popular vertical within the fintech landscape because of its diverse payment instruments, technologies and activities at different stages of the payment process. In order to keep this space innovative, effective and profitable, true collaboration between the key players of the ecosystem is needed. The collaboration between banks and fintech startups was a major problem in the early 2010’s. First, they were ignored. Then, fintech startups were being treated as enemies by the banks, since they were the disrupters of the traditional banking industry. Then, banks tried to understand what is coming and tried to make collaboration. We highly believe in the power of ecosystem which provides superior values to each player. That is why we have launched two major platforms to create a strong payment ecosystem:

1. FinTech Istanbul (FTI) was launched (2016) first which aims to help Turkish entrepreneurs to make the most of the opportunities offered by Fintech’s and facilitate the growth of the newly developing Turkish FinTech entrepreneurial ecosystem via a single platform.
2. Blockchain Turkey (BCTR) was launched (2018) as an initiative of the Turkish Informatics Foundation (TBV), an independent, non-profit organization, that aims to create a strong blockchain ecosystem in Turkey.

Both platforms are designed to enable cooperation from multiple individuals and institutions, fostering true collaboration through different activities such as producing reports, content, organizing events, roundtables and establishing international collaborations. With the help of those platforms some PoC’s are being planned, some of them already being deployed. The true collaboration will flourish when they change their mind-sets and getting to know each other’s core competencies which results true coopetition and a healthy ecosystem. Within this paper we will explain how these two ecosystems will shape the future of payments in Turkey.   .