What is KKB?
KKB (Kredi Kayıt Bürosu): Credit Bureau of Türkiye: is the central credit-information utility for Turkish financial-services markets, established in 1995 by the major Turkish banks. KKB aggregates credit information from all Turkish banks, financial institutions, consumer-finance providers, leasing companies, and increasingly fintech lenders: serving as the central infrastructure enabling credit decisions, fraud prevention, financial inclusion analysis, and various adjacent services for the Turkish financial ecosystem.
KKB’s principal product is the Findeks credit score and credit history for Turkish individuals and businesses: a score (0–1900 scale, with key thresholds at 1100 and 1500) and detailed credit history report covering: (i) existing credit relationships (consumer loans, mortgages, credit cards, vehicle financing, business loans); (ii) payment-performance history across all credit relationships, including delinquencies, charge-offs, and recoveries; (iii) credit application history across the financial-services ecosystem; (iv) guarantor and collateral relationships; and (v) insurance and other relevant relationships.
KKB-operated services beyond credit scoring include: SABAS (Sahte Bilgi Belge Beyan Başvuru Alarm Sistemi): fraud prevention through document-verification database; Risk Center (Risk Merkezi): the Risk Center is established within the Banks Association of Türkiye under Banking Law Additional Article 1 and may run its data exchange through companies founded by at least five banks, which is the role KKB performs; KKB Trade: B2B credit information and trade-credit risk assessment; and Findeks Notification Service: alerting consumers to changes in their credit reports.
For fintech lenders, BNPL providers, and other credit-extending businesses, KKB integration is foundational: (i) credit decisioning using Findeks scores and credit histories as primary input; (ii) fraud prevention through SABAS document verification; (iii) customer-onboarding integration verifying identity and credit eligibility; (iv) portfolio monitoring through ongoing credit-status notifications; and (v) reporting obligations: once licensed as a credit-extending financial institution, the entity must report credit-relationship and payment-performance data to KKB on a regular basis, contributing to the data ecosystem from which it benefits.
The privacy and consumer-protection dimension of KKB operations is substantial: under KVKK and Banking Law provisions, credit-reporting consents must be properly obtained, customers have rights to review and dispute their credit records, certain negative information has time-limited retention, and KKB itself operates under multi-layered regulatory oversight (BDDK, KVKK Authority, MASAK).