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The Turkish Competition Authority decided to open an investigation into Mastercard and Visa, which operate in the global card payment systems market, according to a statement on the authority's website.
The statement said that domestic payment institutions can provide services to consumers wanting to make payments to overseas merchants through bilateral agreements made abroad.
Under these bilateral agreements, overseas payment transactions are localized and can be conducted without being subject to Mastercard or Visa's cross-border transaction fees.
"Initial findings obtained from on-site inspections conducted in this context showed that Mastercard and Visa could obstruct the activities of payment institutions that make bilateral agreements through various methods such as applying sanctions to banks, claiming that they violate their own scheme rules," the Competition Authority noted in a statement.
The authority said an investigation was opened against Mastercard and Visa based on these findings.
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The investigation will evaluate whether Mastercard and Visa have prevented the use of card payment and POS infrastructure by foreign-based merchants and excluded alternative payment solutions.
"The investigation will examine whether Mastercard and Visa have restricted the use of card payment/POS infrastructure by foreign-based merchants and excluded alternative payment solutions," the board said.
It will also assess whether the scheme rules of Mastercard and Visa limit the ability of Turkish payment institutions to provide services to foreign-based merchants.
In November 2024, the authority had also initiated a separate probe into Mastercard and Visa to examine whether their discount and incentive systems created de facto exclusivity with card-issuing banks.
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