Greece's Ministry of National Economy and Finance published an update on the expansion of the IRIS instant payments system, including plans for IRIS acceptance to become mandatory across all physical and e-commerce merchants from 1 November 2025. The ministry framed the change as enabling consumers to make real-time payments directly from their bank accounts without transaction fees, following a meeting between Minister Kyriakos Pierrakakis and DIAS CEO Stavroula Kabouridou on implementation steps and ongoing IRIS system upgrades. The ministry reported that IRIS P2P users exceeded 3.7 million, up 45% versus April 2024, with 272,000 new activations in the first months of 2025. Since the start of 2025, it recorded 22.8 million P2P transactions (up 87.5%) worth more than EUR 1.25 billion, rising to 27 million transactions worth EUR 2.6 billion when including payments to self-employed professionals (P2B) and IRIS commerce; March was described as a record month across all three IRIS products. IRIS is used by 565,000 self-employed professionals, who made more than 500,000 transactions since the start of the year, compared with 100,000 over the same period last year; for businesses, the update highlighted lower charges relative to card payments and near-immediate receipt of funds. The ministry and DIAS indicated that rollout will be coordinated with banks and acquirers ahead of the 1 November 2025 mandate.

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