IRIS payments are mandatory in Greece. What that means at the counter and online

If you run a business in Greece, you have probably already had the conversation with your accountant: since 1 December 2025, businesses have to accept payments through IRIS, the Greek instant bank transfer system, when they sell to private customers. The deadline had been 31 October and was pushed back a month so businesses and banks could catch up.

For readers running a business here from abroad: IRIS lets a customer pay straight from their Greek bank app, usually by scanning a QR code or using a phone number, and the money arrives in the business account within seconds. Card terminals and cash registers had to be upgraded to support it.

I am not going to repeat the legal detail. Your accountant knows it better, and it has changed more than once. What I want to look at is the part nobody tends to mention: what happens after the money arrives.

The payment arrives. Then what?

A card payment on a terminal is tied to a receipt. A cash payment goes in the drawer and onto the receipt. A bank transfer, instant or not, is a line in a bank statement with whatever reference the customer typed — or did not type.

For a shop with a counter, a terminal that supports IRIS keeps the link between payment and receipt. The trouble starts in the places where payment and sale are not the same moment:

• Deposits and pre-payments. A customer pays a deposit for a booking or an order by IRIS on their phone. Weeks later, someone has to know which booking that transfer belongs to.
• Phone orders. "I'll send it by IRIS now." The money lands. The order is on a notepad. Matching the two is a job.
• Balances. Part paid by card, part by transfer, part on the day. The booking says one amount, the bank shows three.

None of this is new with IRIS. Bank transfers always had the same problem. IRIS just makes transfers far more common, because they are now instant and customers are being told they can use them everywhere.

What helps

1. Give every order or booking a short reference, and ask for it. A five-character code in the confirmation message, and a line saying "please include this in the payment description", saves more time than it costs.
2. Record the payment against the booking, not in a separate list. A payments spreadsheet next to a bookings spreadsheet is the setup that produces mismatches.
3. For online sales, let the checkout handle it. A payment taken inside the checkout — by card or by a supported instant method — is attached to the order automatically. Not every provider offers IRIS as a standard option — Stripe, for example, supports it only through its custom payment methods feature — so check what your own provider supports before you build anything around it.

In the dive centre system we built, staff generate a payment link straight from a booking, so the payment and the booking can never be separated. That link happens to be a card payment. The principle is the one that matters: the payment should know what it is for.

The honest version

For a small shop where customers pay at the counter and leave with the goods, IRIS is mostly a terminal upgrade and a sign by the till. You do not need software for that.

It becomes a software question when payments and sales drift apart — deposits, bookings, phone orders, instalments. If that is your business and your bank statement has become a puzzle, tell us how payments reach you today. We will tell you honestly whether it needs a system or a better habit.

And check the specifics — limits, fines, what your terminal needs — with your accountant and your bank. The sources below are where we read about it, not advice for your situation.