Most people in Ireland still pay for things the way they always have: a card tapped against a terminal, or a card number typed into a checkout page. That’s starting to shift quietly in the background, driven less by consumer demand than by regulators and banks laying the groundwork for something different. The Central Bank of Ireland’s Pay by Account, or PAYBAC, initiative is one of the clearest signs of where this is heading, even if most shoppers haven’t noticed it yet.
The stakes go well beyond banking itself. Ireland’s digital economy runs on businesses that depend on people being able to pay quickly and reliably, from grocery delivery apps to subscription boxes to digital platforms such as PlayOJO in Ireland, alongside streaming services and online retailers. Every one of them has a stake in how easily money moves from a customer’s account to theirs, which is exactly the problem open banking is trying to solve.
Moving Beyond the Card
Open banking, in plain terms, lets a person give a trusted app or service permission to see their account data or move money directly from their bank account, without a card network sitting in the middle. Account-to-account payments cut out several of the steps involved in a card transaction, which in theory means faster settlement and lower processing costs for the business on the receiving end.
Ireland’s National Payments Strategy has set a fairly concrete goal here: at least one Pay by Account solution should exist as a trusted, convenient alternative to cards and cash. The Central Bank set up the PAYBAC Working Group specifically to coordinate the changes needed across the payments system to make that happen, and the group has spent 2026 examining everything from the technical plumbing to the commercial and consumer-protection questions that come with it, including early discussions around premium open-banking services such as variable or dynamic recurring payments.
None of this exists in isolation. Irish banks have been able to receive instant payments since January 2025 and send them since October 2025, under the EU’s Instant Payments Regulation. That’s the underlying infrastructure that makes fast account-to-account transfers possible in the first place, and it’s a big part of why open banking is now a realistic near-term prospect rather than a distant one.
What’s Actually Being Tested Right Now
The clearest evidence that this is more than policy talk sits in the Central Bank’s 2026 Innovation in Payments Sandbox, a six-month programme that kicked off in January and is built around safer, faster and more inclusive payments for households and businesses. A handful of the projects going through it show what open banking might actually look like in practice. One, developed with Bank of Ireland, uses open-banking data to give small businesses a clearer, more automated read on their own financial health and lending readiness, the sort of thing an accountant might once have pieced together manually. Another explores instant, card-free payments at the point of sale, taking money straight from a shopper’s account to a merchant’s.
These are still sandbox projects, tested under regulatory supervision rather than rolled out to the public, and that distinction matters. Ireland has the infrastructure and the policy direction pointing toward open banking, but adoption is a separate question, and the Central Bank has been fairly upfront that a lot of the current work is about ironing out barriers and user experience rather than declaring the job done.
The Business Case, With Caveats
For businesses, the appeal is fairly obvious on paper: more payment choice, more competition among providers, and potentially lower transaction costs than card schemes typically charge. Subscription-based businesses in particular stand to benefit if variable recurring payments become a workable alternative to direct debits or stored card details, since missed payments and expired cards are a genuine source of lost revenue for anyone running a recurring billing model.
It would be overstating things, though, to treat open banking as automatically cheaper, safer or faster than what’s already in place. Card payments come with fraud protections and dispute processes that have been refined over decades, and any account-to-account alternative needs to match that level of consumer protection before it can realistically compete for trust, not just convenience.
Trust Is the Real Barrier
That trust question is probably the biggest thing standing between where Ireland is now and a future where Pay by Account is a normal checkout option. Handing a third-party app permission to access or move money from a current account is a bigger psychological step than tapping a card, even if the underlying technology is arguably just as secure. Fraud, data privacy and the simple unfamiliarity of the process are all reasonable things for consumers to weigh up, and it’s part of why the PAYBAC Working Group has consumer protection built into its remit rather than treating it as an afterthought to the technical rollout.
Accessibility matters here too. Any shift away from cards and toward app-based, account-linked payments needs to work for people who aren’t comfortable with banking apps, not just for digitally confident early adopters, or it risks solving a friction problem for some while creating a new one for others.
What Needs to Happen Before This Becomes Everyday
Open banking in Ireland is best described as under construction rather than arriving. The instant payments infrastructure is in place, the policy direction is set, and live projects are being tested through the Central Bank’s sandbox, but a genuinely everyday Pay by Account experience will depend on consistent standards across banks, clearer consumer safeguards, and enough real-world use for people to trust it the way they now trust tapping a card. If that groundwork holds, the businesses that already depend on smooth digital payments, across ecommerce, subscriptions, streaming and online entertainment, may find themselves with a genuinely competitive alternative to cards within the next few years, rather than just another payment method sitting unused in the background.
