Reuters/Gleb Garanich
Overseas transactions up 10%
Turks travelling in record numbers
Inflation and taxes hurt at home
Turks are increasingly using credit cards to buy goods and services abroad, as inflation and taxes eat away at their buying power at home.
Turkish people used their credit cards more than 380 million times for overseas purchases last year, spending $11.5 billion, according to a new report by the central bank’s Bankalarası Kart Merkezi (Interbank Card Centre – BKM).
This trend accelerated in January, BKM data showed, with overseas transactions up more than 10 percent year on year and spending up by almost 70 percent.
Card spending accelerated as a result of a record number of Turks going overseas, with around 11 million foreign trips made in 2024, according to state statistics agency TÜİK. However, the increase in spending far outstripped the rise in trips abroad, which only grew by 4 percent year on year.
High inflation, combined with the strong lira deployed to combat it, has led to a shift in shopping patterns, according to Birol Aydemir, a former head of TÜİK.
“The tide of Bulgarians and Greeks coming to shop in Turkey has reversed, now it is we Turks going abroad for shopping,” he told AGBI.
Increased taxes and duties imposed on imported goods and inflationary pressures have made travelling abroad to shop more appealing, Aydemir said, even just to buy something as simple as a mobile phone.
“The foreign currency rate is a major factor, and domestic inflation in reality is very much higher than what TÜİK declares. So domestic prices keep going up but the foreign currency rate does not, resulting in products bought abroad becoming cheaper for us.”
One sector that is being directly affected by the strong value of the lira is tourism, an impact underscored by slowing card spending by foreign visitors, despite the rise in overseas tourist arrivals over the past few years.
Even though Turkey has posted record high arrival numbers in both 2023 and 2024, with 49 and 53 million inbound foreign visitors respectively, there has been a slowing in outlays, a result of rising prices, Aydemir says.
Foreigners made 149 million transactions on plastic in Turkey last year, worth $13 billion, a modest increase on the 2023 total despite the strong increase in arrivals.
“The tourism sector is suffering, with prices much higher than what they were two years ago, especially compared to prices in Europe,” he said.
“If we were to check pricing parity from two years ago to now, Turkey has become much more expensive.”
