Why What the World Calls Innovation Feels Ordinary to Us: The Hidden Strength of Turkish Banking

Opening a Bank Account Abroad: A Journey Back in Time

I clearly remember my first days in Canada. In the rush of arriving in a brand-new country, I went to a branch to open a simple bank account. Used to the way things work in Türkiye, I expected to wrap up the process in a few minutes with digital approvals and get on with my life. But as I spent hours in the chair across from that representative, wrestling with endless paperwork, wet signatures and clunky approval mechanisms, a single thought kept echoing in my head: our banking system and the services we offer really are miles ahead. In those very first moments, I saw firsthand how transactions we complete in seconds in Türkiye with the phone in our pocket turn into a massive “project” on the other side of the world.

Our Normal Is the World’s Innovation

With that memory still fresh in my mind, I recently came across a story published on The Digital Banker platform. The article enthusiastically described how HSBC’s one-tap authentication solution, called “Mobile Approve,” simplifies the banking experience and hailed it as a revolutionary step. Reading those lines, I’m sure depositors at Turkish banks and the professionals who have devoted themselves to our industry had a quiet chuckle, just as I did. This system, applauded by the world as “the intersection of innovation and efficiency,” enables mobile approval in seconds and combines security with speed. For us, it is an ordinary technology that has been standard for years, one we don’t even think twice about.

Time to Step Into the Global Arena

This contrast is precisely the core motivation behind the pieces I often write under the CX Bulletin banner about international customer experience competitions (if you haven’t come across them before, I recommend this one, that one and also this one). Many projects that we are quick to treat as normal at home, brushing them off with “that’s just how it should be,” are in fact big, visionary steps for the global market. The seamless journeys designed by our financial sector in particular are still a goal the rest of the world is striving to reach.

In an ecosystem where a very large share of consumers (around 80%) focus on speed and simplicity in all their digital interactions, not just financial ones, our standards are winning awards abroad. That is why I take every opportunity to urge our local brands and experts to come out of their shells and enter international competitions. To global juries, the practices we consider “ordinary” are best-practice examples that are reshaping the industry.

“We need to become more aware of our own potential and of the vision we can export to the world.”

Now stop and take another look at those clunky global systems and at the speed of digital banking in your pocket: do you think I’m wrong?