İyzico Sold to PayU for $165 Million
While Turkey’s headline economic growth has been modest, sales of e-commerce companies and their ecosystem partners to foreign buyers at high valuations have continued.
Founded in 2013 on a very small budget by Tahsin Isin and Barbaros Özbuğutu, İyzico became one of Turkey’s largest payment collection providers over six years of intense work. After lengthy talks it was sold to PayU, part of the Naspers group, for USD 165 million—roughly on the order of one billion Turkish lira at the time.
These deals show that Turkey remains an attractive market for foreign investors and funds in e-commerce and related services.
It is never “too late” to start e-commerce: statistics still show Turkey’s online sales volume is relatively low even compared with other emerging markets.