Forem: Kamil AKIN

Slush 2025 MoM 🚀

Kamil AKIN — Sun, 23 Nov 2025 16:06:21 +0000

Title: Slush 2025 MoM 🚀
Date: 19–20 November 2025
Meeting With: Technology Innovators
Participants: Media, Investors, Startups, Volunteers

1. Purpose of the Meeting 💡

Capture the SLUSH energy!
Showcase iyzico capabilities
Identify technology trends shaping fintech

2. Key Contacts

Decision Maker: 13K+ total attendees
Financial Contact: 3,500+ investors
Champion / Main Contact: 1,700+ partners and ecosystem builders
Technical Contact: 6,500+ founders

3. Discussion Summary

Current Setup

$4T AUM
20K+ meetings
4 main stages, 150+ iconic speakers
600+ side events

Main Challenges

No time for sleep
No chance to explore the city
No way to walk even 50 meters without networking

What We Proposed as iyzico 🔒

The way of iyzico, fast, happy, easy
Female Entrepreneurs Program
- https://www.iyzico.com/en/female-entrepreneurs
300B+ transaction volume, 14M protected shopping, 93% customer satisfaction powered by iyzico infrastructure
Secure, regulation-ready payments architecture trusted by world-class companies
- https://www.iyzico.com/en/personal/applicable-stores

4. Agreed Action Items 📌

Follow Slush 100 Winner Closely
Follow Diffraqtion, AI backed cameras 20x better than any camera on the planet.
“Still doubting Europe? GO TO HEL”
Track EU reaction on startup regulation landscape, interesting times ahead.
Still doubting Europe? GO TO HEL
US vs China vs Europe Startup Comparison 🌍
- US Gen AI startups raised $50B+ in early 2025, high bar.
- China VC market projected at $47.6B+, competition in tech and scale is real.
- Europe tech funding rebounded €21B in Q3 2025.

5. Next Steps & Notes 🎯

Be prepared for Slush 2026
Include musicians in quarterly product retros
- “Great products are art, not science.” — Stephen Whitworth, CEO of incident.io
Network with sailors and pirates
- Embrace the "shipping culture" mindset, key lesson from Doordash and Wolt
Learn from Pieter van der Does
- Adyen scaling payments globally requires the right strategy of talent and culture
JSON is dead, TOON on next.

The Journey to Zero Value Authentication in Turkish Market

Kamil AKIN — Mon, 19 Aug 2024 12:37:02 +0000

OPENING

In the early 2000s, when cash was still king, the weather was scorching, just like today. I, a 7-year-old, slightly chubby boy, had my 5 Turkish lira paper money that bigger than my palm, ready to buy my favorite lemon stick, running barefoot to the nearest local shop, the excitement bubbling inside me like a cold soda on a hot day.

As I reached the shop, the familiar fresh bread greeted me, handing the paper money to the local shop owner, or 'bakkal,' I watched as he took it with both hands, stretching it out as if it were some ancient artifact, held it up to the light, rubbed it between his fingers, his face unreadable and checked if that paper money was real or fake. I can’t even describe the anxiety that rushed through me—what if the shop didn’t accept the cash? The world outside the shop faded away, it felt as though the entire shop was holding its breath, waiting for his verdict, if the money was real or fake.

Looking back, that was my first experience with what we now call zero-value authentication, though I had no idea at the time.

THE CHALLENGE
According to iyzico's 2023 E-commerce Ecosystem in Türkiye report here here:

Nearly 6 billion e-commerce transactions were conducted in Türkiye in 2023.
The market is projected to experience a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 25.8% from 2022 to 2030.
This growth is driven by Türkiye's rapid digital transformation, strategic location near key markets, and a young, tech-savvy population.

Closer look to Turkish Ecosystem in 2023;

Market Growth:
- Mobile commerce, in particular, has seen remarkable growth, with a large percentage of transactions now conducted via smartphones.
Consumer Behavior:
- The demand for convenience, product variety, and better deals continues to fuel this trend.
Payment Innovations:
- Installment payment options are popular among consumers, making high-value purchases more accessible.
- The TROY card scheme, Türkiye's domestic card network, has join up the competition with MasterCard and Visa, emerging as an innovative leader in the Turkish banking industry.
- And TROY strive to include every age group in this transformation, recently releasing a special agreement for retired people, who tend to be more cautious with online payments.
Logistics and Delivery:
- There is a growing emphasis on faster, more reliable delivery options to meet rising consumer expectations.
- For instance, with Amazon, you can place an order before going to sleep and have it delivered by the time you're sipping your morning coffee—no matter where you are in Türkiye.
Challenges:
- Cybersecurity remains a critical concern, with ongoing efforts to protect consumer data and transaction security.
Error codes:
- Based on our databases and majority of online shopping contributors, most known three error codes, relatively:
  - Insufficient funds
  - Fraudulent transactions
  - Expired cards

We understand:

Insufficient funds are a reflection of the rapidly growing economy.
Fraudulent transactions, while concerning, are somewhat expected.
But expired cards?

One of the major problems of merchants was lack of customer verifications. Merchants could not verify customers while they were adding their cards whereas in other countries (i.e. EU, US), cards can be verified with zero value verification transitions.
In TR, merchants were not able to use this service. Hence, they either do not verify or charge TRY 1 and release it quickly by hoping customers will not see.
Zero value verification also helps to reduce expired card declines significantly as cards can be verified with the new card through tokens.

This anomaly was our primary motivation on zero value authentication, leading us to embark on a mission to significantly reduce errors related to expired cards.

SEARCH FOR SOLUTIONS
With a clear target in mind, we set out to create a game plan with an entrepreneurial mindset:

We started with extensive research, spending hours studying card schemes and fintech API documentation. We reached out to business partners, connected with people on LinkedIn, talked to our merchants, and held face-to-face meetings. We made our problem clear:
- "We want to reduce expired/invalid/unknown card errors. Can we collaborate?"
Unfortunately, the response was as empty as zero value authentication—no positive outcomes.

TURNING POINT
But wait a second, an entrepreneurial mindset means embracing failure and pivoting when necessary. After our initial failure, we turned to our trusted business partners. We revisited our strategy and decided to shift our focus. Instead of just defining the problem, we needed to find a real business issue that cross with zero value authentication on the way.

Like anyone nursing a broken heart, we turned to those closest to us—in this case, our strongest business partners.
That’s when Amazon shared their issue and questioned why TR payment ecosystem do not support zero value authentications.
The solution was within reach, like a mountain we were ready to climb.

COLLABORATION
With our new strategy in place, the next step was clear: reach out to the top voices to talk about zero value authentication in the fintech market on LinkedIn. This is where our luck turned in our favor when Mustafa Aktaş from BKM (Interbank Card Center) replied and agreed to meet for coffee. That meeting was the second brick on the wall. Mustafa recognized the significance of the problem and offered his support, opened the door for us to connect with every acquirer and issuer in the market.
We sent emails to the major issuer banks, and incredibly, all 67 issuers agreed to implement zero value authentication on their cards in the next quarter. I was over the clouds with happiness; we were making real progress. At that point, we had:

A merchant eager to use the product.
The issuers on board.
The final piece of the puzzle was finding a domestic acquirer to process zero-value payments.

After numerous meetings with various acquirers, we finally connected with Semih Özenoğlu from YKB, one of the largest acquirers in the Turkish market. Semih took major role during 3DS 2.0 changes already on their previous company at Turkish market and Semih's vision aligned perfectly with ours. They believed in our project and proudly agreed to be the first bank in Türkiye to accept zero-value authentications.
In just six months, we turned our business case from a triangle to a solid square.

OUTCOME
So today at iyzico;

We are committed to serve zero value authentication to all our merchants and significantly reducing the number of expired and invalid cards in our wallet solution by 2026.
We anticipate that the majority of PSPs will follow suit, reducing the issue of expired cards across our ecosystem by 2030.

I would like to extend my heartfelt thanks once again to Zeynep from Amazon, Mustafa from BKM and Semih from YKB for their incredible support.

And as for me, that 7-year-old boy from the early 2000s, I wear the same proud smile as when the bakkal accepted my money. I now look forward to my next journey, inspired by the famous words of Nasreddin Hodja about a lake: “Ya tutarsa?” (What if it works?)

PayU Hub & iyzico PSP Integration / Part2 / Postman Configuration

Kamil AKIN — Sun, 07 Mar 2021 19:49:59 +0000

I think Postman is such a reliable platform in terms of any web service 101.
There are always a library, documentation, project or video, yet none of them feels like a SUCCESS responded group of HTTP calls.

Sounds like, PayU Hub developers think the same, therefore they have created a page called Give our APIs a Try.

Open the page and just click on 'Run in Postman' button.
Afterwards, it's time to clear up those 3(three);

Provider Integration Guide
Setting your Environment Variables
Running the Requests in the Correct Order

Provider Integration Guide
The provider integration page, namely PayU Hub & iyzico, consists of general integration specifications. It's written on the page that the minimum API version is 1.3.0. So put that info in our pocket and move on our way.🚵

Setting your Environment Variables
There are 6+1 different variables / header parameters / credentials that need to be set up for a full cycle transaction; app_id, public_key, private_key, x-payments-os-env, api-version, Content-Type and the +1 idempotency key.
To begin with, app_id, public_key and private_key parameters comes along soon after we generate 'Create Business Unit' for the very first time.
It is just under Account > Business Units at PaymentsOS control panel. 💪

And the rest;

api-version we already know
Content-Type is application/json
idempotency_key is optional
Lastly, x-payments-os-env is test for your test purposes.

Running the Requests in the Correct Order
Now, we are ready for Step2 and Step3 as mentioned on the previous article.
First, we will store customer cards as a token. Then, we will accept payments.
Here we go! See you on the Part3🏁

PayU Hub & iyzico PSP Integration / Part1 / Create Test ENVs

Kamil AKIN — Fri, 26 Feb 2021 18:59:46 +0000

'The year 2020 is going to be an unforgettable year for all us...', the following report starts with.
https://www.iyzico.com/blog/iyzico-2020-online-alisveris-raporu/

Here in articles, we will be examining iyzico, namely the most known PSP of the Turkish lands with their association PayU Hub.

Before we dive into the payment world, let me share with you some KPIs from the report above that type in the Turkish language provided by iyzico;

Average basket amount was 168 TL(Turkish Lira) in 2020, while 146 TL in 2019.⬆️
Increase in books is 267%📕
Lastly, extra info you can't find on the report, iyzico was 100% uptime even in BF while half of the acquirers were down.📢

Of course, that success comes with such collaborations like PayU Hub&iyzico PSP integration, simply a world without financial borders.⭐

TL DR;
PayU Hub is PayU's single API payment integration to solve cross-border commerce challenges through technology.
https://corporate.payu.com/news/payu-hub-single-api-integration/
Also a PayU corporate, iyzico is a financial technology company facilitating online shopping.
https://www.iyzico.com/en

How those two come together?
Let's get started.

First, we need two test ENVs, iyzico and PayU Hub, relatively.

iyzico test ENV
Please go to https://sandbox-merchant.iyzipay.com/auth/register/ and create a sandbox account for your test operations. Your static OTP is 123456. Overall, when you logged into your account, you may access your credentials under Settings > Merchant Settings, from the menu on the left.

Once we get our credentials from iyzico test ENV, actually we are totally done on the iyzico platform.

⚠️ On this dual, we will be only focusing PayU Hub web services to integrate our PSP solution in the Turkish market. Then, next;

PayU Hub test ENV
Short and sharp, https://control.paymentsos.com/signup.
Once you have signed up for new account.
You’re just 3 steps away from accepting your first payment!

So far so good. We have created our iyzico test account and our PayU Hub test account. It is time to follow those 3 steps!

Step1;Add providers and configure your business units
PayU Hub documentation is well created to follow everything in detail. As it is described on the link below, follow Account > Services and search for iyzico. As soon as you have chosen iyzico, fill in the blanks with credentials you get from iyzico test ENV. That's it, we have added our provider and configured our business units.
https://developers.paymentsos.com/docs/setting-up-payments-os.html

Before Step2, briefly 'Collect a customer’s card information' section, I would like to show you the easiest way of understanding(for me) any API architecture, in this case PayU Hub Postman Collection configuration.
So, It is time read the Part2.☕