Colendi lands banking licence to become Turkey’s first digital deposit bank
The Anglo-Turkish embedded fintech service provider Colendi has received the green light from Turkey’s Banking Regulation and Supervision Agency (BRSA) to launch the country’s first digital deposit bank.
Colendi secures banking licence in Turkey
The banking licence enables Colendi’s payment business, which was launched in 2021 and currently processes more than $300 million in financial transactions, to receive deposits and lend from its own balance sheet “in a secure regulatory environment” under the name ColendiBank.
With the licence now under its belt, the digital bank will attempt to onboard 50 million customer in the region, backing its efforts with the combination of financial technology and artificial intelligence (AI).
Leveraging this technology partnership, ColendiBank says it plans to introduce a new suite of services that are “both efficient and individually-tailored” while promising to “redefine user experiences”.
“We are thrilled to obtain authorisation for the establishment of a digital deposit bank, ushering in a new era of accessible banking for our platforms and users,” says Bülent Tekmen, co-founder and CEO of Colendi.
“Colendi’s business model is to work with first class organisations and enable them to reach their retail and SME customers to offer financial products within a regulated environment.”
The formation of ColendiBank was catalysed by Colendi’s June 2022 acquisition of the blockchain settlements and payments provider SETL, which is based in London.
SETL serves a diverse group of prominent institutions, including the central banks of England, France and Singapore, as well as Swift and the Bank of New York.
The company is also the primary technology partner for the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s digital dollar initiative, and has previously collaborated with Swift to integrate central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) and tokenised assets into the global financial ecosystem.
Its real-time settlement capabilities were further reinforced when it introduced its Regulated Liability Network (RLN) software under the brand LedgerSwarm in July.
