Open banking is transforming how financial services operate across Europe, and Ireland is no exception.
While adoption has been more gradual compared to markets like the UK, the Irish open banking landscape is evolving rapidly, offering significant opportunities for businesses looking to innovate their payment and data strategies.
If you're considering implementing open banking in Ireland, you likely have questions about the regulatory framework, market readiness, and which providers can deliver the coverage and reliability you need.
This article will bring you up to speed and tell you everything you need to know about open banking in Ireland.
In this article:
Open banking in Ireland: the state of play in 2025
Key challenges for open banking adoption in Ireland
Use cases for open banking in Ireland
How to get started with open banking in Ireland
How Yapily's open banking infrastructure serves the Irish market
Looking for an open banking provider with comprehensive coverage in Ireland? Yapily could be the perfect fit: book a call with one of our experts to find out more
Open banking in Ireland: the state of play in 2025
Open banking in Ireland is governed by the EU’s PSD2 (Payment Services Directive 2), introduced in January 2018. Under PSD2, banks must provide secure access to customer account data for authorized third parties.
By following the broader EU approach, this gives banks more freedom in how they design their Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), which can encourage innovation and flexibility. The trade-off is inconsistency: data formats, authentication flows, and reliability can vary between banks. For businesses, that means more integration work and ongoing maintenance to keep connections stable. (However, a solution like Yapily can help reduce the operational complexity of maintaining multiple bank integrations.)
In practice, open banking in Ireland (and in general) supports two main types of services:
Account Information Services (AIS): Give authorised providers access to account data such as balances, transactions, and account details. These power use cases like account aggregation, financial management tools, and enhanced credit decisioning.
Payment Initiation Services (PIS): Enable direct account-to-account payments, bypassing cards. Payments are faster, cheaper, and can be settled instantly with lower fees.
The Central Bank of Ireland oversees implementation, ensuring PSD2 compliance and consumer protection. Most Irish banks use the Berlin Group’s NextGenPSD2 standard for their open banking APIs, though variations across institutions can still create hurdles for third-party providers (TPPs).
Ireland’s open banking market is still developing at a steady pace: as of 2023 (the latest statistics at time of writing), five AISPs and 11 PISPs were authorised by the Central Bank of Ireland.
Ireland ranks fourth in the EU for online shopping, highlighting a ready-made market for Pay by Bank.
The Banking & Payments Federation Ireland has identified open banking as “a significant shift in financial services,” stressing the need for a coordinated, industry-wide approach to unlock its full potential.
Key challenges for open banking adoption in Ireland
Consumers are embracing digital channels at record speed, with 2.3 billion electronic payment transactions worth €5.5 trillion in H1 2024: up nearly 24% year-on-year. Yet awareness of open banking remains low, infrastructure is fragmented, and consumer trust is lagging.Here are some challenges that are slowing adoption:
Fragmented APIs: Unlike the UK’s OBIE, Ireland has no central framework to guide implementation. Each bank develops APIs in its own way, with different data formats, authentication flows, and levels of reliability. For third-party providers, that means every new bank connection can feel like starting from scratch. It raises integration costs, complicates scaling, and reduces the consistency of customer experiences across providers.
IBAN discrimination: Despite EU rules prohibiting it, some Irish banks still reject foreign-issued IBANs. For businesses serving international customers, this creates payment failures and customer frustration. It also undermines one of the EU’s core goals of seamless cross-border transactions. Until enforcement is tightened, IBAN discrimination remains a major obstacle to the free flow of account-to-account payments.
Low awareness and trust: Like many European markets, consumer awareness of open banking in Ireland is still developing. While most people are comfortable with mobile banking, instant transfers, and biometric security, “open banking” as a concept can feel abstract or unfamiliar. The challenge is less about technical capability and more about perception: providers need to clearly explain how open banking works, why it’s safe, and what tangible benefits it offers to everyday users.
Patchy instant payments: SEPA Instant transfers became mandatory to receive in January 2025, but Irish banks are not required to support sending them until October 2025. This gap means account-to-account payments cannot yet deliver on their biggest promise: truly instant settlement across the board. For merchants and fintechs, the business case for adopting open banking payments is weakened until instant is universal.
The Banking & Payments Federation Ireland has launched an open banking working group that brings together banks, payment service providers (PSPs), and fintechs to tackle shared challenges and accelerate adoption.
At the same time, new payment regulations are removing barriers: as of January 2025, all Eurozone banks must accept SEPA Instant transfers at no extra cost, with sending costs aligned to standard SEPA transfers by October 2025, making instant settlement the default rather than the exception.
Read more: The instant payment regulation: Why it matters for PSPs
Use cases for open banking in Ireland
Here are some key use cases for open banking in Ireland:
Account aggregation: Account aggregation brings together balances, transactions, and account details from different banks into one view. This is especially useful in Ireland, where many consumers maintain accounts with more than one institution. For wealth managers, fintech apps, and digital banks, it creates the chance to deliver smarter dashboards, financial planning tools, and personalised insights that keep customers coming back.
Lower-cost payments: Card payments remain expensive for businesses, cutting into margins. Open banking enables direct account-to-account payments that can significantly reduce transaction costs. Offering Pay by Bank helps your clients lower costs, speed up settlement, and strengthen cash flow. It also supports bulk payments and scheduled payouts, making it easier for platforms and PSPs to process salaries, supplier payments, or gig worker disbursements in one go.
Learn more: Open banking vs card networks: the future of payments
Smarter lending: Traditional credit scoring often misses entire customer groups, from younger borrowers to self-employed workers. With access to real-time account data, lenders can make faster and more accurate decisions, opening up new markets. Banks, credit unions, and alternative lenders can use this to serve the “credit invisible” population in Ireland while keeping risk under control.Read more: Open banking for lenders: How to choose the right platform
Streamlined compliance: KYC and AML checks are often slow, manual, and costly. Open banking allows businesses to pull in verified identity and account data directly from banks. For PSPs and financial institutions, this means that onboarding that once took days can now take minutes. Faster verification improves the customer experience while cutting fraud and compliance costs.
Read more: How open banking simplifies Know Your Customer (KYC) checks
Flexible recurring payments (VRPs): Direct Debit is widely used in Ireland, but it comes with limitations: high failure rates, long lead times, and little flexibility. Variable Recurring Payments provide a modern alternative, giving businesses more control and customers more transparency. Subscription services, utilities, and financial platforms can all benefit from a system that is faster, more flexible, and easier to manage.Read more: Variable Recurring Payments vs Direct Debit: The next wave in payment innovation
Instant bank account verification: Fraud and failed transactions remain major pain points in onboarding. With open banking, account ownership and details can be verified instantly. PSPs, marketplaces, and fintechs benefit from fewer rejected payments and faster customer activation, while users enjoy a smoother and more trustworthy sign-up experience.Read more: Instant bank account verification: How to choose the right service
How to get started with open banking in Ireland
With the right partner, you can plug into Irish and European banks through a single API and start launching open banking products in weeks, not months.
Broadly, here’s what that process looks like:
1. Define your use case: Firstly, you need to decide whether you want to access account data, initiate payments, or both. For data services, you’ll need an Account Information Service Provider, and for payments, a Payment Initiation Service Provider. Some platforms, like Yapily, offer both through a single application.
2. Pick a provider: Instead of building direct connections with every bank, you’ll most likely work with a regulated provider. They hold the licenses and manage the integrations, giving you one secure, reliable connection to all the banks you need. You’ll need to make sure the provider offers the features you need.
Check which Irish banks they cover (including business accounts), the performance of their APIs, and whether they can support both payments and data at scale.Learn more: Five best open banking solutions for payments and data3. Design your customer journey: You can embed open banking directly into your own product (white-label) or use hosted pages for a quicker launch.
Looking to get started? Book a call with one of our open banking experts
How Yapily's open banking infrastructure serves the Irish market
Ireland's open banking ecosystem presents unique challenges that require a provider with comprehensive coverage, technical reliability, and regulatory expertise.
Yapily has been serving the Irish market for years, offering businesses the infrastructure they need to unlock the power of open banking. Here’s why leading businesses like Pleo, Emma, and Allica Bank trust Yapily:
Comprehensive coverage across Ireland and Europe
Yapily provides coverage across Ireland, including the major banks, Bank of Ireland. Allied Irish Banks and Ulster Bank: all through a single integration.
That same integration also connects you to nearly 2,000 banks across 19 European countries, meaning when you’re ready to expand beyond Ireland, you don’t need to take on new providers or integrations; the infrastructure is already in place.
Yapily also offers industry-leading connectivity to business accounts across Europe. That means more reliable access to the data SMEs, lenders, and accounting platforms actually need.
A broad range of payment and data features across consumer and business accounts
Yapily isn’t limited to just one side of open banking. Through a single API, you get both AISP (data) and PISP (payment) services. This simplifies compliance, reduces operational overhead, and gives you flexibility to launch:
And more, through a single integration
White-labelling for complete brand control (and Hosted Solutions to get started ASAP)
With Yapily, you can choose how you bring open banking into your product.
Direct integration gives you full control over the customer journey. Payments and data flows happen entirely within your own environment, with no third-party branding. This white-label approach builds trust, keeps conversion high, and ensures the experience feels seamless for your customers.
Hosted Pages offer a faster route to market. They’re pre-built, PSD2-compliant interfaces you can customise with your own logo, colours, and fonts. This option removes the need for heavy development resources, letting you launch in weeks rather than months while still offering a proven, user-friendly experience. Hosted Pages also allow you to test and validate new use cases before committing to a deeper direct integration.
Both options sit on the same Yapily infrastructure, so you can start quickly and then scale into a fully branded, integrated solution when the time is right.
Choose Yapily for open banking in Ireland
By partnering with Yapily, you can access comprehensive coverage of Irish banks, enterprise-ready infrastructure, and both payment and data services through a single provider.
Speak to our open banking experts to explore how we can help your business unlock the power of open banking in Ireland.