AIB, Bank of Ireland and PTSB have launched Zippay, a new person-to-person payment service that lets customers send, request and split money using just a phone number. No IBANs. No BICs. No hunting through your contacts for a 22-character account string you almost certainly saved wrong the first time.
It is, on the surface, a reasonable idea. The three pillar banks are rolling it out to roughly five million customers on a phased basis, integrated directly into their existing mobile banking apps rather than requiring a separate download. Transfers are instant, free to use, and capped at €1,000 per day for sending and €500 per transaction for requests. Enrolment is automatic unless you opt out.
The technology behind it is provided by Italian payments firm Nexi, and the underlying rail is SEPA Instant, the EU-wide fast payments infrastructure that has existed for years. Zippay is not a new payment network so much as a friendlier front door to one that was already there.
Late to the Party, and Everyone Knows It
The awkward truth is that countries across Europe have had services like this for years. Sweden has had Swish since 2012. Denmark’s MobilePay has been widely adopted across the Nordics. The UK has had Faster Payments with phone-number-based transfers baked into most banking apps for a long time.
Ireland’s pillar banks attempted something similar before, scrapping plans for a Revolut-style standalone app in 2023 after regulatory delays and internal difficulties. Zippay sidesteps that problem by living inside apps that already have approval, which is pragmatic, but it also means the product is more incremental than transformative.
Banking and Payments Federation Ireland chief executive Brian Hayes has described it as a “significant development” and pushed back on the idea that the banks are behind schedule. The argument is that by watching other markets first, the Irish rollout can avoid earlier mistakes. That is a defensible position, though it is the kind of thing you tend to say when you are late rather than when you are not.
The Revolut Problem
Here is where the timing gets complicated. Zippay’s entire value proposition rests on network effects. It is useful when the person you want to pay is also on it. Right now, that means customers of AIB, Bank of Ireland and PTSB. Revolut users, N26 customers and anyone banking with a credit union or An Post are not part of the system at launch, though other institutions can apply to join via Nexi.
That is a significant gap. Revolut has somewhere in the region of three million users in Ireland, a country of five million people. A substantial number of Irish adults already use Revolut for exactly the kind of instant, phone-number-based transfers that Zippay is now offering. For those users, Zippay solves a problem they already solved themselves, years ago, with an app they are not being asked to leave behind.
Revolut has not indicated it plans to integrate with Zippay in the near term, which is not surprising. Joining a platform built by your direct competitors, on infrastructure you do not control, is not an obvious move. Until that changes, Zippay’s network is smaller than the headline five million figure suggests in practice.
More Competition, Not Less
The timing is also notable because Monzo recently entered the Irish market, adding another well-regarded digital banking option for consumers who are open to switching or supplementing their main account. Between Revolut, N26, Monzo and now Zippay, Irish consumers genuinely have more choice than ever. The days of the pillar banks being the only show in town are long gone.
That context matters when evaluating what Zippay is really for. This looks less like an innovation play and more like a defensive one, a way for the incumbents to close a feature gap that fintechs have been exploiting for years. There is nothing wrong with that, but it is worth being clear-eyed about it.
What It Actually Does Well
Setting aside the competitive framing, Zippay does address a genuine friction point. Asking someone to send you money via a traditional bank transfer in Ireland has historically meant exchanging IBANs, which is a minor but real annoyance. Replacing that with a phone number lookup is meaningfully more convenient, even if it is not revolutionary.
The security case is also reasonable. Because Zippay runs inside apps that are already subject to banking regulation and existing fraud protections, there is an argument that it offers more consumer recourse than some third-party payment tools. The opt-out enrolment model will raise eyebrows among privacy-conscious users, but the practical risk is low given you can remove yourself without much friction.
Credit unions, An Post and other institutions are able to apply to join the platform, and the infrastructure is designed to be open to future merchant or business payments. If uptake is strong and integrations follow, Zippay could eventually become something more genuinely useful than it is at launch.
Worth Having, Hard to Get Excited About
Zippay is not a bad product. For customers of the three pillar banks who do not use Revolut or any other fintech for person-to-person transfers, it will make splitting a dinner bill or paying back a friend noticeably easier. That is real, if modest, progress.
For everyone else, particularly the large and growing share of Irish adults who already have this functionality elsewhere, it is more of a shrug than a revelation. The banks have built something useful. They just took long enough that much of their potential user base already moved on without them.
