Originally Posted by maverikbc

Almost all mid range and up restaurants take credit cards (CC), budget places around 90%.

I've seen vending machines which allows to top up Istanbul kart with CC, but most of them don't take CC. In other cities (eg Antalya ) buses and ticket gates take contactless Visa /MC , quite impressive.

Yes, new IST airport, and metro is open. It isn't tourist friendly, though, I didn't find network map anywhere, for example. Apparently it was free for a month after opening, but there was no announcement about it at least in English, I only found out my Istanbul kart wasn't charged, and googled to find out why.

My card from 5 years ago didn't allow to reload, and I didn't find any service counters anywhere, so I ended up buying a new one.

Masks aren't mandatory, less than 5% of people wear them on transit.