Greece Mandates IRIS Payment Integration for All Businesses by 2025

Greece’s economic plan is to integrate the IRIS instant payment system with cash registers, which are already connected to POS terminals, across the country by fall of 2025. By spring 2025, all businesses will be required to link their business accounts with IRIS to accept direct payments from customers.

The Minister of National economy and Finance, Kostis Hatzidakis, highlighted that the IRIS system is a priority, stating that 3.3 million IBANs are already connected with IRIS out of a total of 6 million, with the goal being for instant payment systems like IRIS to be expanded to all businesses.

Businesses will be required to link IRIS with their cash registers so that when an instant payment is made, a receipt is automatically generated, similar to the process for card payments following the POS-cash register integration.

At the business’s checkout, a QR Code with the credit details of the business account will be displayed. Customers will have the ability to scan this code with their mobile devices to complete transactions in seconds. Instant payments via IRIS are free of charge for consumers, provided daily transfers do not exceed 500 euros, while businesses will pay lower fees than POS systems.

Businesses found without connected cash registers and POS systems, will face fines of 10,000 euros for those using single-entry bookkeeping, and 20,000 euros for businesses using double-entry bookkeeping.

However, for businesses operating in communities with up to 500 residents and islands with populations under 3,100 (excluding tourist islands), these fines will be halved. Repeated fines within five years, will lead to the fines being doubled.

Additionally, professionals found without IRIS-enabled systems will face a standalone fine of 1,500 euros, while failure to register a business account with the tax authority (AADE) will incur an additional 1,000 euros fine.

Source: tovima.com