Is Stripe available in Turkey? Stripe vs Iyzico vs Gumroad for digital products

Stripe is not available to sellers based in Turkey. Turkey is not on Stripe's list of supported countries, so a Turkish business cannot open a Stripe account, even though Turkish cards can pay Stripe merchants elsewhere. For a Turkey-based digital shop the real choice is between Iyzico, a merchant-of-record platform like Gumroad, or a US company through Stripe Atlas.

I found this out the expensive way. My plan for ToolGenX was Stripe for international cards and Iyzico for Turkish buyers. Then I learned that Stripe does not onboard merchants based in Turkey, and I am one. So I built the checkout on Iyzico. As of September 2026 that on-site checkout is switched off, my products sell through Gumroad, and the books sell on Amazon Kindle. This is the comparison I wish I had read first.

Is Stripe available in Turkey?

No, not for sellers. Stripe lets businesses open accounts only in the countries listed on its global availability page, and Turkey is not on that list as of September 2026. The limit applies to where your business is registered, not where your buyers are: a merchant in Germany or the US can take payments from Turkish-issued cards through Stripe without trouble.

For a founder in Turkey that leaves three practical routes:

Route	Setup	Fee on a $29 sale	Who files sales tax / VAT
Iyzico, your own checkout	about two days of integration	about $1.25	you
Gumroad (merchant of record)	about 20 minutes	$4.54 direct	Gumroad
Lemon Squeezy or Paddle (MoR)	an afternoon	$1.95	the platform
US company via Stripe Atlas, then Stripe	$500 plus US filings, days to weeks	$1.14 (domestic card)	you

Lemon Squeezy and Paddle each decide separately which payout countries they support, so check your own country with them before building on either.

What does each option cost?

Fees differ more in what they include than in the headline percentage. Stripe and Iyzico charge only for processing, so tax is your job. Gumroad, Lemon Squeezy, and Paddle charge more because they are the merchant of record and file the tax. The table below prices a $29 digital product for a buyer paying by card.

Checkout	Published rate	Fee on $29	Tax handled for you
Stripe	2.9% + $0.30 domestic card, +1.5% international	$1.14	no
Iyzico	4.29% + 0.25 TL	~$1.25	no
Lemon Squeezy	5% + $0.50, processing included	$1.95	yes
Paddle	5% + $0.50 per Checkout transaction	$1.95	yes
Gumroad, direct sale	10% + $0.50, plus 2.9% + $0.30 processing	$4.54	yes

Sources for every rate are listed at the end. Iyzico's 0.25 TL fixed fee is a few cents at current exchange rates, which is why its dollar figure is approximate.

Gumroad: the on-ramp that also files your tax

Gumroad is the fastest checkout for your first sales: about 20 minutes from signup to a live buy link. It takes 10% + $0.50 per direct sale, and card processing of 2.9% + $0.30 comes on top. Since January 1, 2025 it has been the merchant of record for its sellers, collecting and remitting sales tax and VAT worldwide.

What you get: a checkout that takes cards worldwide, sends receipts, hosts the file, handles tax, and generates license keys. What you give up: about 15.7% of a $29 sale, the customer relationship sitting in someone else's database, and most of your funnel data.

That last part cost me more than the fee. I wrote up the numbers in Is Gumroad worth it?, and the full fee breakdown is in Gumroad fees in 2026.

Stripe: the standard, if your country allows it

Stripe is the checkout most founders graduate to once buyers are real. It charges 2.9% + $0.30 per successful domestic card payment, plus 1.5% for international cards and 1% when currency conversion is needed, per Stripe's pricing page. Budget two full days for a first-time integration and a half-day of refund testing.

What you get: a hosted, PCI-compliant Checkout page, Apple Pay and Google Pay, webhooks that tell you exactly what happened, and a customer portal where buyers update payment methods and manage subscriptions. Stripe Tax adds 0.5% per transaction to calculate and collect tax where you are registered.

What you handle yourself: the webhook handler for checkout.session.completed, signature verification, idempotency for retries, the order row, the license key, and the email with the download link. None of it is hard. All of it has to be built.

For a Turkey-based seller, all of this is academic unless you set up a company elsewhere. Stripe Atlas incorporates a Delaware company for a $500 one-time fee, then $100 a year for the registered agent. That company can open Stripe, and it also brings US tax filings and bookkeeping, which is a real cost for a solo shop.

Iyzico: the gateway a Turkish business can open

Iyzico is the payment gateway a Turkey-based merchant can actually sign up for. Its published rate is 4.29% + 0.25 TL per successful transaction, with custom offers for corporate sellers. It supports taksit (installment) payments, which Turkish buyers expect on larger purchases, and each bank's term rate applies on top for installment sales.

What it does better for the Turkish market:

• Taksit. Stripe's installment support covers Japan, Mexico, and Mastercard Installments, per its installments docs, not Turkish bank installments.
• Local cards and 3D Secure. Iyzico's flow is built around Turkish-issued cards.
• Turkish lira pricing. The buyer sees TL, with no conversion math.
• E-invoice data. The merchant panel exports what your accountant needs for Turkish e-invoices.

Setup took me about as long as a Stripe build would. The pieces are the same: signature check, idempotency, order row, license key, confirmation email. In the ToolGenX codebase the Iyzico callback handler is 200 lines and the gateway adapter another 181.

Lemon Squeezy and Paddle: paying someone to file the tax

Lemon Squeezy and Paddle become the merchant of record, which means they collect and remit VAT and sales tax in every jurisdiction you sell into. You never file an EU One-Stop Shop (OSS) return yourself. Both charge 5% + $0.50 per sale with card processing included, per the Lemon Squeezy and Paddle pricing pages.

On a $29 sale that is $1.95, against $1.29 for Stripe plus Stripe Tax. The 66-cent difference buys you something Stripe Tax does not: Stripe Tax calculates and collects, but registering in each jurisdiction and filing the returns remain your job.

The case for a merchant-of-record platform:

• You sell into many tax jurisdictions and do not want to think about it.
• You are outside the EU, so cross-border VAT filings would be painful.
• You value time-to-market more than the fee.

The case against:

• You are willing to register and file, in which case Stripe with Stripe Tax costs less per sale.
• You want the customer relationship with your brand, not the platform.

What a sane setup looks like

A sane payment setup for a small digital shop selling to EU, US, and Turkish buyers is one gateway you can legally open, one database, and one refund pathway. Outside Turkey that gateway is usually Stripe, with Iyzico added for Turkish buyers. Inside Turkey it is Iyzico, or a merchant-of-record platform until volume justifies your own checkout.

Here is what I built for ToolGenX. It has been switched off since September 2026 while sales run on Gumroad, but the design still holds:

• Iyzico Checkout Form as the only gateway, embedded in the checkout page rather than a redirect. It accepts global Visa, Mastercard, and Amex, with taksit, lira pricing, and e-invoice for buyers in Türkiye.
• One database (Supabase) holding orders, licenses, and the consent and withdrawal evidence EU law requires.
• One callback handler writing to that database, with idempotency on the provider's payment ID.
• One refund pathway: the EU-mandated withdrawal button in the buyer's account, which checks eligibility and calls Iyzico's refund API.

If you are outside Turkey, add a Stripe handler next to it and the rest stays the same. If you want the build without writing it from scratch, the CodeForge skill pack runs the planning, TDD, and code review workflow I used for this checkout.

When should you leave Gumroad?

Leave Gumroad when its fee in a single month exceeds what your own checkout costs to run, including your time and your tax filings. For most solo sellers that point sits around $3,000 a month, where the fee gap passes $350. At $500 a month it is about $60, not worth a new checkout.

I built my own checkout before I had the sales to justify it, and that was the mistake. With one verified Gumroad sale in a year, the fee was never what hurt me. So I switched my checkout off and went back to Gumroad until sales justify the move. If you want to model your own break-even point, the AI CFO Toolkit has the unit-economics sheets for it.

When should you add Iyzico?

Add Iyzico the moment a Turkish customer asks for taksit, or when Turkish sales stall on card friction. If you are a Turkey-based founder who wants your own checkout, Iyzico is the starting point rather than an add-on, since Stripe will not onboard you.

What this does not solve

Payment infrastructure is plumbing. Stripe, Iyzico, and Gumroad do not fix distribution, the wrong offer, or a site nobody has heard of. If your sales are flat, the answer is almost never "the wrong checkout". It is almost always the wrong channel or the wrong message.

Once buyers are showing up and dropping off at the checkout, though, fixing the checkout becomes the highest-leverage thing you can do that month.

Sources

• Stripe global availability: countries where businesses can open an account.
• Stripe pricing: 2.9% + 30¢ domestic cards, +1.5% international, +1% currency conversion.
• Stripe Tax pricing: 0.5% per transaction where registered.
• Stripe installments: Japan, Mexico, Mastercard Installments.
• Stripe customer portal: billing details, payment methods, subscriptions.
• Stripe Atlas: $500 one-time, $100 a year after the first year.
• Iyzico pricing: 4.29% + 0.25 TL per successful transaction.
• Lemon Squeezy pricing and Paddle pricing: 5% + 50¢, merchant of record.
• Gumroad pricing: 10% + 50¢ direct, merchant of record since January 1, 2025.

Rates checked on September 19, 2026.

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Part of the solo founder series. ToolGenX never ran on Stripe. The Iyzico checkout described above is built but switched off, and purchases currently go through Gumroad and Amazon Kindle. See the refund policy for the consent and withdrawal flow built for it.