Irish central bank outlines a multi-year payments strategy amid concerns that banks are missing out on instant payments

Ireland’s central bank recently presented a new multi-year payments strategy. The new strategy emerged at a time when many in the financial industry grew concerned about the banks, believing that they were failing to grasp the opportunities that instant payments are offering.

Ireland’s payment systems are lagging behind the rest of Europe

Vasileios Madouros, the deputy governor of the Central Bank of Ireland, presented the new strategy at the BPFI National Payments Conference. He said that the last national payments plan was created more than a decade ago, and since then, there has been remarkable change and innovation in domestic payments.

However, he also noted that there are other important areas where Ireland continues to lag behind the rest of Europe, as well as other regions in the world.

Speaking on this matter, he said that consumers having greater access to payment solutions is dependent on the market grasping the available opportunities. “Despite the instant payments infrastructure being available since 2017, material providers of payment accounts in Ireland have not implemented it. For consumers and businesses, this is an unsatisfactory outcome,” Madouros argued.

Last year, Irish banks wanted to launch their own mobile app, which would allow merchants to perform and accept instant account-to-account payments for POS and ecommerce transactions. Unfortunately, the plans failed, as the rapidly changing payments landscape overtook them.

The central bank now proposed four high-level priorities meant to overcome inertia. These are goals that are expected to be achieved by the end of 2030.

Irish Central Bank presents four high-priority goals

The first of the four high-level priorities is for the local banks to make sure that Irish consumers, as well as small businesses, can benefit from payment innovations. These would be the same innovations that are already present elsewhere in Europe. As a result, the emerging payment solutions should also be integrated with Europe, as well as any other interoperable key markets, if possible.

Simultaneously, the bank wants to ensure that cash remains widely available and to stick around as an accepted means of payment. It stressed that the option to pay with cash should be safeguarded, both for consumers and for businesses.

As for the other two priorities, they will focus on maintaining security and resilience in payments and embedding research and analytical insights. This is important as it will provide valuable information that will affect future policy decisions.

In conclusion, Madouros stated that many of the benefits of technology related to payments for domestic customers and the broader economy are still untapped in Ireland. However, the National Payments Strategy offers an opportunity to take a long-term view and develop a new, coherent, system-wide approach that would enable the evolution of payments in Ireland, within the broader European context.