Finance Minister Kyriakos Pierrakakis said there is a need for greater visibility of the IRIS payment system at the point of sale, better public awareness, stronger incentives for merchants, and reward mechanisms from banks and acquirers.
Speaking at the “Payments 360 Conference 2026, powered,” Pierrakakis said the payments landscape is undergoing a fundamental transformation that is reshaping how the economy functions, how trade is organized, how money moves and how value is created.
“What until recently was treated mainly as a technical function of the financial system has now evolved into a critical infrastructure of trust, efficiency and certainly competitiveness,” he said.
He added that payments affect not only the speed and cost of transactions, but also business productivity, the citizen experience and increasingly a country’s strategic position internationally.
He underlined that instant digital payments are changing not only how transactions are conducted but also how the economy will operate in the future. In Greece, he noted, the IRIS system is one of the clearest examples of this transition.
