IRIS is rapidly becoming the primary driver of Greece’s transition to instant payments, with 126,400,000 transactions totaling approximately €11 billion processed through the service in 2025. The system’s explosive growth has played a decisive role in boosting the share of instant payments in Greece, which reached 35.8% in June 2026 — up from just 3.3% in December 2021.
Detailed figures on IRIS service usage in Greece
A breakdown of performance across individual IRIS services was presented by DIAS S.A. Managing Director Stavroula Kampouridou at the company’s Annual General Meeting of shareholders:
- The IRIS Person to Person (P2P) service, which handles money transfers between private individuals, was the primary growth driver, recording 111,400,000 transactions in 2025 — a 90% increase compared to 2024. The number of users surpassed 4,300,000, and the upward trend continued into the first half of 2026, when the user base climbed to 4,600,000.
- Significant penetration has also been recorded by IRIS P2Pro, which facilitates payments from private individuals to freelancers and sole traders. The service now has close to 600,000 users, and in the first half of 2026 alone, receipts reached €135,000,000 — confirming that instant payments are gaining ground in the everyday transactions of small businesses.
- Even more notable was the expansion of IRIS Commerce, which covers payments at both physical and online stores. With the mandatory acceptance of instant payments by legal entities — in addition to card payments — coming into effect on 1 December 2025, Greece became the first country in Europe to achieve universal acceptance of account-to-account (A2A) payments at points of sale.
- The “IRIS Everywhere” initiative drove a surge in participating online stores from 8,000 to 70,000, while acceptance of the service was extended to 1,200,000 POS terminals via dynamic QR codes — creating one of the largest proportional instant payment acceptance networks in Europe. According to Ms. Kampouridou, the project was completed in just 10 months, with only a single one-month extension, thanks to the coordinated effort of all stakeholders across the payments chain.
- From 2026, daily limits for P2P and P2Pro services were also doubled, rising from €500 to €1,000, while IRIS Commerce payments to businesses are subject to no such limit. In addition, the unified IRIS Rulebook has been finalized and is being rolled out gradually across banking apps, delivering a more consistent user experience.
- The rise of instant payments extends beyond IRIS itself. In the first half of 2026, instant interbank credit transfers grew by 65%, compared to a 30.6% increase in interbank transactions processed via IRIS. As the DIAS CEO emphasized, instant payments are a tool for growth and for strengthening Europe’s strategic autonomy in the payments sector.
Originally published in Apogevmatini
