In the second part, we will examine how leading companies overcome these problems, how next-generation collections infrastructures work, and how receivables can be turned into a source of financing.
In the first eight months of 2026, 223,912 cheques bounced in Türkiye, with a total value of 233 billion TL. Over the same period, the value of cheques presented to banks rose by 23 percent, and the share of those that bounced increased as well (TBB Risk Center).
Striking as this figure is on its own, its full meaning becomes clear only when you look at what lies behind it. Every bounced cheque represents a sale that was, at some point, treated as complete. The invoice was issued, the goods were delivered and the amount was booked as revenue, yet the cash never reached the company.
For most growing companies, the core difficulty lies not in making sales. What really matters is how quickly, at what cost and with what assurance a sale turns into cash.
In this first part, we will look at what collections management means, the current dynamics that make collections harder around the world and in Türkiye, the effect of collections on working capital and cash flow, and the five structural problems that block collections in Türkiye.
In the second part, we will examine how leading companies overcome these problems, how next-generation collections infrastructures work, and how receivables can be turned into a source of financing.
What Is Collections Management?
Collections management is the full set of processes, instruments and decisions a company uses to turn the receivables owed by its customers and dealers into cash with the best possible balance of cost, maturity and risk.
Today, however, that definition falls short. Effective collections management now requires answering three separate questions at the same time.
Assessing these three questions within a single decision framework turns collections from a process that is merely monitored into an area that can actually be managed.
The Faturalab view: collections is less a technology problem than a financing question. When structured correctly your receivables can create new financing without increasing your reliance on bank credit lines.
The World Is Grappling with the Same Problem: The Global Collections Picture
Collections pressure is not unique to Türkiye. Recent data show that, worldwide, receivables are tying up more and more cash.
These examples show that the collections problem usually cannot be solved by legislation alone. Because rules aimed at shortening payment terms do not remove the buyer’s need for cash, they often shift the problem elsewhere in the chain rather than resolve it. A more lasting solution lies in building infrastructure that makes credit sales financeable.
In Türkiye, the Picture Is Harsher
In Türkiye, the same dynamics become more pronounced in a high interest-rate environment and tightening credit conditions.
How Do Collections Affect Working Capital and Cash Flow?
In a credit sale, the goods are usually delivered first, while the cash inflow may wait until the end of the term. Throughout this period the receivable sits on the balance sheet as an asset, but it cannot be used to meet daily cash needs. The longer collection takes, the larger the share of working capital that remains tied up in receivables.
Consider a concrete example.
In a company with annual turnover of 1 billion TL, one day’s turnover is worth about 2.7 million TL. If the average collection period shortens by 10 days, the cash freed up amounts to ten times this daily figure, roughly 27 million TL. Given what it would cost to finance a sum of this size with a loan, even a few days’ improvement in the collection period can be meaningful for working capital.
On the cash-flow side, much of the difficulty comes down to data. When collections, limit, risk and pricing data are scattered across different bank screens and Excel files, it is possible to report on the past, but forecasting the period ahead becomes much harder.
PwC’s Global Treasury Survey supports this picture.
52% of companies with 1-10 billion dollars in revenue still gather and consolidate the data needed for cash forecasting manually, and 76% of respondents see poor data quality as an obstacle to forecasting (PwC).
The Five Structural Problems That Block Collections in Türkiye
As a platform that tracks the financing flow of more than 7,000 member companies, we see that these problems are not independent of one another; more often than not, they feed off and reinforce each other.
1) Dependence on cards and POS is not sustainable
A large part of dealer and retail collections runs through cards and POS terminals. In earlier years, rapidly growing card limits allowed this model to expand quickly, but they did not make it sustainable over the long term.
The credit card is one of the most expensive financing methods for both the dealer and the end customer. Because the cost is hidden within commissions and instalment charges, it often goes unseen. As monetary policy tightens card limits, a collections model that leans on this channel is forced to operate with shrinking capacity and rising cost.
2) DBS’s share is shrinking, and dealers cannot secure limits
DBS (the Direct Debit System) served for many years as the collections backbone of the corporate supply chain, but its share is now steadily shrinking.
As it becomes harder for dealers to obtain bank limits, rising demand for direct loans also squeezes DBS capacity. On top of this, most existing DBS structures are built around a single bank. In that case, a growing dealer network is often constrained by the limited capacity of a single bank.
We frequently see this in the field. The same dealer may have unused limit at one bank while its limit at another bank is full, so a new order has to wait or the dealer switches to card payment. Since the choice of bank, the maturity, the pricing and the collateral are usually managed manually, a company can end up turning to more expensive methods while leaving much of the financing capacity it already holds entirely unused.
3) Payment companies focus only on cards
Most of the payment intermediaries in the market optimise around cards: routing to the most suitable POS terminal, instalment and commission optimisation, payment links, QR codes. Valuable as these solutions are, they do not cover the invoice-based credit receivables that carry the real weight of B2B collections, nor DBS limit management, early collection or alternative financing.
Collections is treated as a payment-channel problem, when at its core it is a financing problem.
4) There is no structure that looks at collections as a whole
Cards and POS sit with banks and payment institutions, DBS with banks, cheques and promissory notes in physical operations, factoring with separate institutions, and receivables insurance in an entirely separate process. Neither data nor capacity flows between these silos. As companies try to integrate the pieces one by one, spare capacity in one channel cannot be used to relieve a bottleneck in another.
5) No new source of financing is created from receivables
Today, collections can be financed only up to the limit a bank provides. This both caps capacity and concentrates systemic risk at a single point. Yet companies hold a large pool of assets that generates steady and predictable cash flow, namely invoice-based receivables. Unless this pool is connected to investment funds, pension funds or qualified investors, it remains “hidden capital.”
The shared result of these five problems is that cards grow more expensive and more constrained, DBS falls short, the silos do not talk to one another, and no alternative source of financing exists. As a company grows, collections turns into the biggest bottleneck to sales growth.
Conclusion: The Problem Is Structural, but Not Without a Solution
The difficulty of collections in Türkiye stems not from a single cause but from several structural problems that feed one another. Dependence on cards and POS raises costs, DBS capacity struggles to meet demand, different channels do not talk to each other, and no new source of financing is created from receivables. When these problems come together, collections can become one of the most visible bottlenecks to sales as a company grows.
Yet the situation is less of a dead end than it appears. Around the world and in Türkiye, leading companies are moving collections out of the accounting back office and into the treasury, where it is managed as a financing function. What makes this possible is a new generation of infrastructures that bring collections, limits, risk and financing together within a single structure.
In the second part of this guide, we turn to the solutions. We will look at how leading companies around the world manage collections, how multi-bank DBS, early collection and alternative financing approaches work, and how to unlock the hidden capital in your receivables.
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