Central Bank announces! New phase reached in Digital Turkish Lira
The CBRT has completed the second phase evaluation of the Digital Turkish Lira Project. 23 projects from 12 banks and 6 payment institutions will proceed to testing.
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The Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey (CBRT) has announced that the second phase application evaluation process, conducted as part of the call for participation in the Digital Turkish Lira Project ecosystem, has been completed. As a result of the evaluation, it was decided that a total of 23 projects from 12 banks and 6 payment and electronic money institutions will proceed to the third phase.
In the third phase, development activities and sandbox tests will be conducted for the projects. Through this process, the CBRT aims to test innovative products and scenarios compatible with the digital Turkish lira from both technical and operational perspectives.
Applications for the first phase of the project were accepted between September 4 and October 15, 2025. During this period, 16 banks and 25 payment and electronic money institutions from the finance and technology sectors submitted a total of 85 project applications.
Following the CBRT's initial evaluation, 51 projects that met the criteria moved to the second phase, and applications for this phase were carried out between November 13 and December 12, 2025. In the second phase, the documents and presentations submitted by the applicants were reviewed.
CATEGORY DISTRIBUTION OF PROJECTS
According to the information shared by the CBRT, it was noted that in the category distribution of the projects moving to the third phase, a single project could be associated with more than one heading. Accordingly, 15 projects were in the Tokenization category, 17 in Programmable Payments, 7 in User-Centric Identity, 15 in Interoperability with Existing Systems, and 1 in Machine-to-Machine Payments.
The statement also reported that as a result of the second phase evaluation, 6 projects were placed on hold, and these projects could be included in the third phase at a later date.
The CBRT noted that work continues in line with the goal of developing public-private sector cooperation in the fields of financial technologies and the digital Turkish lira.