lonelycrowd

Would be curious to know if anyone has first-hand knowledge but I suspect that DCC at points of sale has been outlawed in Turkey at some point over the last 2-3 years. I've never encountered it, even in super-touristic areas where prices are quoted in Euros - in those few places (only really encountered in Antalya thus far) they seem to be converting from the quoted EUR prices into TL at a surprisingly fair exchange rate before you even swipe your card. (Quoting reservations in Euros and taking payments in TL at the date of departure is a really annoying practice, but it's not the same as DCC.) Discount clothing retailer LC Waikiki has Garanti Bank-branded signage in some of its stores promoting DCC as a value-added benefit, but I've never even been offered DCC there when paying with a US credit card. It's pretty nice that DCC seems to be nonexistent for purchase transactions, though counterbalanced by the fact that merchants in most of Istanbul have persistent problems getting chip-and-signature (and especially Chase products for some reason) to process. Protip for US card users: tell the cashier your card is "shifresiz" and suggest that they process it as a Garanti Bank card if it doesn't go through at first.

The ATM's, on the other hand, are a whole different animal. I've been offered DCC rates as bad as 5.5% (BNP Paribas/TEB having that dubious honor). ING, Deniz and Garanti also try to hit you with it. For Garanti, one assumes they must be making some serious cash - they actually have an ad in the domestic terminal at AYT urging travelers to choose their ATMs to "benefit" from DCC and bragging about the number of currencies they support. If you don't want to deal with DCC offers and/or want to support non-DCC banks in principle, try YapiKredi, Sekerbank and Halkbank. Think Vaktif and Akbank are also OK if I remember correctly.