The Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey (CBRT) announced on its website that the application evaluation processes for the Digital Turkish Lira Project Ecosystem Call for Participation have been completed.
The statement noted that the call for participation in the Digital Turkish Lira Project ecosystem invites organizations from the finance and technology sectors to develop innovative products and scenarios compatible with the digital Turkish lira. It added that banks and payment and electronic money institutions could apply, and that financial technology (fintech) firms collaborating with the applicants were also involved in the process.
The statement provided information that in the first phase of the three-stage application process, completed between September 4 and October 15, 2025, 85 project applications were received, and 16 banks and 25 payment and electronic money institutions submitted applications under the call.
Following evaluations by the CBRT, 51 of the 85 projects that met the first-phase evaluation criteria were approved to advance to the second phase. The statement added that second-phase applications were submitted between November 13 and December 12, 2025.
The statement announced that, following evaluations of the documents and presentations submitted by applicants in the second phase, 23 projects from 12 banks and 6 payment and electronic money institutions were approved to move to the third phase.
The statement noted that development activities and sandbox testing would be carried out in this phase, and provided the following: 'As a result of the second phase evaluations, 6 projects have been placed on hold and may be included in the third phase in the future. A project may be associated with more than one category.
The category distribution of the 23 projects that advanced to the third phase is as follows: 15 Tokenization, 17 Programmable Payments, 7 User-Controlled Identity, 15 Interoperability with Existing Systems, and 1 Machine-to-Machine Payments. The CBRT continues its efforts to enhance public-private collaboration in the context of financial technologies and the digital Turkish lira. '
