[5] Akbank was founded in Adana, Turkey in January 1948, originally to provide financing for the cotton producers in the Çukurova region.

As the majority of the bank founders were born in the city of Kayseri, the name "Adana-Kayseri Bankası" was chosen, soon to be shortened to its initials AK or Akbank.

In 2013, Citigroup sold a 10.1 percent% stake in Akbank as part of a move to prepare for the Basel III rule and technical reasons related to Citibank.

Following this transaction, Citigroup's stake in Akbank was 9.9% but on 5 March 2015 Citi announced it was selling its remaining shares for $1.15 billion.

[7] Akbank provides services to over 10.8 million active customers through Headquarters in Istanbul, Data and Life Center, 19 Regional Directorates in Türkiye, 711 branches, and more than 12 thousand employees.

While it is not common in Turkey, Akbank's frequent system outages caused millions of its customers not being pay at POS terminals or transfer funds.

It has a domestic distribution network that includes over 800 branches and around 14,000 employees,[11] Akbank operates from its headquarters in Istanbul and 20 regional directorates around Turkey.