Driven by the global march of e-commerce, payment technology is one of the liveliest fintech investment sectors. Amadeus backed a winner in iyzico, the payment service provider that has grabbed the lead in Turkey and is growing fast in the Middle East, with close to 4 billion Turkish liras (TRY) of transaction volume.

PayU, a global fintech operator and investor, has announced its plan to acquire the company subject to regulatory approvals. Founded in 2013 in Istanbul, iyzico is a great example of what success looks like for investors in this space. Why? Two reasons:

The importance of localization
Amadeus is a major investor in the payment stack across emerging markets – part of the the fintech infrastructure which covers everything from billing systems to fraud tools to mobile wallets.

Our experience has shown that to build a successful payment offering you need to think local first. Payment systems are regulated at national level and customers expect online purchasing to be better than their offline experience, with familiar credit card and banking services.

In Turkey, the expanding economy is dominated by thousands of SMEs and iyzico’s service needed to reflect that diversity. With fast, all digital onboarding and an easy integration process, iyzico makes it possible for individual sellers to start in online commerce with certified digital infrastructure in less than 24 hours. Online businesses are able to maximise acceptance rates and collect payments in their local currency through instalments, reflecting local norms.

An exceptional team
Most successful start-ups claim that they got there because of the founders’ vision. To some extent that is always true but usually it is the quality of the management team as a whole that makes a business work. Great founders know how to fill key posts and take advice from their backers such as VCs on these essential appointments.

In the case of iyzico, I can hand-on-heart say that Barbaros and Tahsin built an excellent management team. Their original focus on building a world class product quickly shifted to attract world class talent in each of the specific management functions and build around these an equally strong team. They also were relentless in building the foundations of a performance culture whilst continuing to scale their organization – nothing reflects better this culture then the amazing company’s campus they built in Istanbul close to the beautiful shores of the Bosphorus.

With great companies such as iyzico, Brazilian lender Creditas and Kreditech in our current portfolio, Amadeus is on the look-out for new opportunities in fintech. If you’re an entrepreneur or business leader looking for growth capital to scale-up, please get in touch.