Istanbul Fintech Week 2026 will spotlight AI and digital wallets

Istanbul Fintech Week 2026 will take place in Istanbul on October 5-7, focusing on artificial intelligence, digital finance and payment technologies. The event will feature executives from BKM, TROY, banks and technology companies, as well as Nobel Prize-winning economist Prof.

Scraper SystemSeptember 24, 2026, 03:32 PM

Istanbul Fintech Week 2026 will spotlight AI and digital wallets

Istanbul Fintech Week 2026 will take place in Istanbul on October 5-7 under the theme “Smart, Embedded, Tokenized.” The event will examine the impact of artificial intelligence on banks’ technology infrastructure, customer experience, risk management and business models.

Held since 2019, Istanbul Fintech Week has hosted more than 17,000 participants, over 630 speakers and more than 330 sessions to date. The event has brought together stakeholders from more than 62 countries.

Digital payments and wallet technologies

Digital payments will be one of the areas where the transformation of the banking sector directly affects customers. BKM’s “bex” digital wallet brings cards from different banks together in a single application and can be used for online shopping, electronic government payments and in-store purchases.

BKM General Manager Ozan Deniz will deliver the opening address at the Payments Summit on October 6. The summit will bring together industry representatives from different countries to discuss artificial intelligence, digital finance, domestic card systems, payment sovereignty, competition among digital wallets and changing payment dynamics.

TROY Executive Vice President for Member Relations and Marketing Cengiz Değirmenci will speak on the panel on domestic card systems and payment sovereignty, while TROY Executive Vice President for Product and Technology Management Cem Yıldız will speak on the panel on competition among digital wallets. Okan Yıldız, BKM’s Director of Strategy Development and Data Management, will take part in the session on agent-based artificial intelligence and autonomous finance.

Garanti BBVA Payment and Electronic Money Services General Manager Kerem Orbay will also discuss the impact of embedded payments and payment orchestration on the future of commerce. Orbay will assess the position of banks in the new value chain.

Artificial intelligence and digital banking sessions

At the Artificial Intelligence in Finance Summit on October 6, Cognitive Finance Group CEO Clara Durodie will deliver the opening address on combating AI-enabled fraud. Durodie will discuss new opportunities for financial institutions in this area and their governance requirements.

Nobel Prize-winning economist Prof. Dr. Daron Acemoğlu will deliver the closing address on the future of artificial intelligence and finance on the same day. The event will therefore cover a range of topics, from the operational transformation of banking to the impact of artificial intelligence on the economy and institutions.

As part of the Digital Banking Summit on October 7, Şebnem Dağ Güven, Akbank Executive Vice President for Digital Solutions and Strategy, and Hüseyin Demirhisar, Head of Global Operations at bunq, will discuss the future of smart banking. The session will compare the transformation experience of a traditional bank with the approach of a digital-native bank, while examining the impact of artificial intelligence on ways of working and customer expectations.

Demet Zübeyiroğlu, co-founder of Istanbul Fintech Week, said artificial intelligence is not merely a technology investment for banks and that business models, customer experience and risk management must be redesigned together. Zübeyiroğlu said the event will examine the different responses of traditional banking and digital-native models to transformation.

Istanbul Fintech Week 2026 will spotlight AI and digital wallets