Payments & Card Security

The deposit is paid by card or by bank transfer. We take Visa, MasterCard and American Express online, all at the same price, with no card surcharge.

The balance is paid in cash to your guide in Turkey, in the currency you booked in.

If you would rather send the deposit by bank transfer than pay online, email info@toliratours.com before you check out and we will send the account details. The booking is confirmed once the transfer arrives.

If you prefer not to carry cash, you can pay the full tour price online when you book. You then have no remaining tour balance to pay in cash.

You pay a deposit to confirm the booking and the rest later. The deposit is usually between 30% and 40% of the total.

The deposit varies by tour and season. It covers the payments we need to make in advance for flights, hotels and permits. Your exact figure is shown in the booking form before you pay, so you never have to work it out yourself.

The rest is the balance, and it is paid in cash to your guide in Turkey. Paying the whole tour online at once is also an option, and the booking form has a Pay in full setting for it.

Bookings made close to the start date sometimes need the full amount up front, because there is no time left to hold anything on a deposit. We tell you before you pay, not after.

The balance is paid in cash to your guide, in the same currency you booked in. If you paid the deposit in euros, the balance is in euros, and the same goes for dollars and pounds. We do not convert the balance into Turkish lira. This means you do not need to agree on an exchange rate when you pay.

Your booking documents show the exact balance figure, so you know what to bring before you leave home. Bring smaller banknotes rather than one large note. Guides do not carry much cash for giving change.

You get a signed receipt when you hand it over. Keep it with your voucher until the tour ends.

If carrying cash does not suit you, pay the tour in full online when you book and there is nothing left to settle in Turkey.

Card payments run through Garanti BBVA, a Turkish bank, over an encrypted connection. Your card number and security code go from your browser to the bank, not to us. We never see them and we do not store them, and the bank sends us a payment confirmation instead of your card details.

Every card payment also passes through 3D Secure, which means your own bank asks you to approve the charge before it completes.

Check the padlock and the address bar before you type anything. Card details belong only on toliratours.com. We will never ask you for a card number by email, and any message that does is not from us.

3D Secure is the step where your bank confirms it is really you. After you enter the card details, the bank sends a code by text or asks you to approve the payment in its app. Once you do that, the payment completes.

Turkish rules require it on international card payments, so it cannot be skipped here. It also means a stolen card number on its own is not enough to book a tour.

Two common problems are worth checking before you try to pay. If your phone cannot receive texts abroad, ask your bank to switch you to app approval before you travel. And some banks, particularly in the United States, block Turkish merchants until you tell them not to.

Almost every decline we see comes from the bank, not from the booking. Work through these in order.

1. Check your phone and your banking app for a code or an approval prompt. Entering it usually finishes the payment.
2. Call your bank and ask them to allow international online purchases and 3D Secure on the card. Wait half an hour, then try again.
3. Try a different browser, or switch from office wifi to mobile data. Some company networks block the redirect to the bank.
4. Try another card. A card from a different bank often goes through when the first one will not.
5. Ask us for a fresh payment link, or for bank transfer details if the card route keeps failing.

A failed payment charges you nothing. If a pending amount shows on your statement after a failed attempt, it is an authorisation hold, which means the bank has temporarily reserved the amount. Your bank releases it within a few days.

Prices are set in euros. You can switch the site to US dollars or pounds sterling with the currency selector. Your selected currency then applies to the tour price, the deposit and the balance.

We do not price in Turkish lira and we do not take the balance in lira either.

Your card is charged in the currency shown at checkout. If that is not the currency of your account, your own bank does the conversion at its own rate, which is why the figure on your statement can differ slightly from the figure on the invoice.

Give it ten minutes, then check your spam, junk and promotions folders and search for toliratours. Messages from a Turkish sender can be placed in these folders by mistake.

If it is not there, the address we hold for you may have a typo in it. Reply to any earlier message from us, or write to info@toliratours.com from the address you want us to use, and we will resend it.

If messages keep failing to arrive, try a second email address with a different provider. This usually helps. Some company mail servers reject foreign senders without telling anyone, so a personal address is the safer place to receive a payment link.

Adding info@toliratours.com to your contacts before you expect anything from us prevents most of this.

No. The total in the booking form is the total. There is no booking fee, no card surcharge and no extra service charge added at the end, and paying by American Express costs the same as paying by Visa.

Two costs sit outside our control. Your own bank may charge a foreign transaction fee on an international payment, and it sets its own exchange rate if you pay in a currency you do not hold. Both appear on your statement, not on our invoice.

What the price does not cover is listed on each tour page under Not included. Optional extras such as a balloon flight are priced in the booking form before you add them, never afterwards.