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Turkey8 min read

The Turkish checkout through an AI agent's eyes: seven obstacles and how to fix them

Forced sign-up, province and district menus, Turkish ID numbers, SMS codes, 3D Secure, cash on delivery and bank transfer. What an AI shopping agent can and can't do at each step of a typical Turkish checkout, and what a store can change.

AI shopping agents now reach the checkout. When someone asks Claude in Chrome, Gemini or ChatGPT's browser to buy something, the agent finds the product, fills the cart and walks to the payment step. That is where a Turkish store's checkout often looks different from the stores these agents were mostly built and tested on.

This guide goes through the seven checkout features our agent simulator looks for on Turkish stores: what each one is, what an agent can and can't do with it, and what you can change. It isn't a ranking of good and bad stores, and it contains no statistics from our own runs: we don't have a large enough sample yet. The few figures below come from the Ministry of Trade and are linked.

This article is for information only and isn't legal advice. Check the current legislation and your own legal adviser for your situation.

How we observe a checkout

When an agent in our simulator reaches the payment step, or a sign-in or guest screen right before it, the page is only observed: we read the field labels and names, the autocomplete hints, how many options a menu has and the text on the page. We type nothing, select nothing and send nothing, and the agent never goes past the payment step. If no agent reaches checkout, every item below is reported as "not measured" rather than guessed.

Three of the items open a task in the project panel because a store can usually fix them: a Turkish ID number field, SMS verification before payment, and province and district fields without autocomplete hints. Forced sign-up is recorded as a friction item. 3D Secure, cash on delivery and bank transfer are information only.

What agents do at checkout anyway

Before the list, one thing to keep in mind: the main agents are designed to hand control back to a person for sensitive steps.

  • Anthropic says Claude in Chrome asks users before high-risk actions such as purchasing or sharing personal data.
  • Google says its agentic checkout always asks for the shopper's permission and buys only after the shopper confirms the purchase and shipping details.

So the goal isn't an agent that pays without the shopper. The goal is an agent that can get all the way to that last confirmation with everything filled in correctly, so the shopper only has to approve.

1. Forced sign-up (no guest checkout)

What it is: the checkout asks the shopper to create an account or sign in, with no "continue as guest" option.

What an agent can and can't do: an agent doesn't create accounts or sign in on the shopper's behalf. Without a guest option, the purchase stops here and goes back to the person.

How to fix it: offer guest checkout, and offer to create an account after the order. We found nothing in the Distance Contracts Regulation that requires the buyer to have an account; its rules on pre-contract information are about the seller's identity, not the buyer's.

2. Province and district menus (il / ilçe)

What it is: the address form has a province menu and a district menu that only fills in after a province is chosen. Turkish addresses are built from these levels, down to neighbourhood and street, under the national address database (UAVT) defined in the Population Services Law.

What an agent can and can't do: an agent can usually handle dependent menus, but it has to choose them in order and wait for the second list to load. Without clear labels it may not know which field is the province and which is the district.

How to fix it: give the fields visible labels and the standard autocomplete hints (autocomplete="address-level1" for the province, address-level2 for the district), and load the district list on the same page when a province is chosen.

3. Turkish ID number field (T.C. kimlik numarası)

What it is: a required field for the buyer's 11-digit national ID number at checkout.

What an agent can and can't do: an agent can't fill this in without asking the shopper, and many will stop here. It's personal data that the shopper has to provide.

How to fix it: ask for it only when you really need it, and make it optional otherwise. For sales to individual consumers, Turkish tax practice allows an e-Archive invoice to use the placeholder 11111111111 when the buyer doesn't give an ID number, according to a 2018 Revenue Administration (GİB) announcement. Data protection law also expects data to be limited to what the purpose needs, and the Personal Data Protection Board has found that requiring the ID number to open a website account was unlawful. If you do need it (for example for certain products), say why next to the field.

4. Phone or SMS verification before payment

What it is: before the shopper can pay, the site sends a code by SMS and asks for it back.

What an agent can and can't do: an agent can't receive the code. The purchase can't continue without the person stepping in.

How to fix it: don't require phone verification before payment. If you need it, ask for it after the order or only for risky transactions. We found no rule that requires stores to verify a buyer's phone at checkout. The one-time code most shoppers know comes from their bank's 3D Secure step, which is a separate matter (next item).

5. 3D Secure

What it is: the card payment goes to the issuing bank's verification screen, usually with a one-time code. According to the Ministry of Trade, 64.1% of card payments in Turkish e-commerce in 2025 used 3D Secure.

What an agent can and can't do: the last step always belongs to the cardholder. That is by design and isn't a fault of your store. Shopify's WebMCP checkout tools, for example, hand control back to the buyer for 3D Secure.

How to fix it: nothing to remove. Make sure the order summary, with the final price and shipping cost, is visible before this step, so an agent can hand over to the shopper with everything already correct.

6. Cash on delivery (kapıda ödeme)

What it is: the shopper pays when the parcel arrives. The Ministry of Trade puts cash on delivery at 3.5% of e-commerce payments in 2025.

What an agent can and can't do: an agent can prepare the order without any card details, because payment happens at the door. It will still ask the shopper to confirm before placing the order.

How to fix it: say clearly, on the product or shipping page as well as at checkout, whether cash on delivery is available and what it costs. An agent can't compare a fee it only discovers at the last step.

7. Bank transfer (havale / EFT)

What it is: the order is placed and the shopper sends the money to the store's bank account afterwards. According to the Ministry of Trade, bank transfers made up 29.2% of e-commerce payments in 2025, second only to cards (62.5%).

What an agent can and can't do: the agent can get the order to the confirmation step, but the payment itself is made later by the person.

How to fix it: state the payment instructions, the time limit for paying and what happens to an unpaid order (for example, when it is cancelled) in plain text before the order is placed.

What to do first

  1. Offer guest checkout.
  2. Make the Turkish ID number optional unless you really need it, and explain why if you do.
  3. Move SMS verification out of the path to payment.
  4. Label your province and district fields and add the autocomplete hints.
  5. Show the final total, delivery cost and the cash-on-delivery fee before the payment step.

Our agent simulator shows which of these an agent actually met on your store, observed but never typed into. Start with the free readiness test.

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