By Chrysostomos Tsoufis

24 hours before the expiry of the deadline that the Ministry of Finance has given to freelancers to register in the IRIS payment system, and a large portion of them are still ….whistling indifferently.

In fact 1 in 4 are not currently out of the system.

Data from DIAS available to show that out of a total of 715,000 freelancers, only 545,000 can currently provide their customers with the possibility to pay with the IRIS system. 60,000 of them were registered in September.

Of course, it is one thing that I provide the possibility to pay with IRIS and another thing that I actually do. And the reality is that only 16%, about 87,200, have used it. The remaining 457,800 have not received a single payment through IRIS.

The figures show that in September 86,000 payments were made through IRIS from individuals to professionals with a total amount of €6m. In the corresponding month last year, only 7,400 payments were made. In other words, an 11-fold increase is observed even though so many thousands of professionals remain inactive or out of the system. So a bright field of glory for improvement

Overall, however, in payments between individuals, IRIS is literally… booming.

Users have reached 3.15 million, which is almost 30% of the population and 50% of those with web banking and 65% are active. The 120,000 are “fresh” users, from September.

In September alone, transactions between friends reached €4 million and the amounts that “changed hands” reached €218 million.
In total, in the first 9 months of the year, transactions through have exceeded 34 million. , +150% from last year, and the amounts traded reach €3.7 billion, +115% from last year.
2/3 transactions are for amounts up to €50 and 1/4 up to €10

However, from tomorrow – in theory – the customer dealing with a freelancer will be able to ask him to pay with IRIS. And when the controls begin, anyone found outside the system will be fined €1,500

The great advantage of these payments is that they are completely free for amounts up to €500 (either between citizens or for payments to professionals) using only the mobile phone. Especially for transactions with freelancers, the limit of €500/day applies per transaction and not per customer. For example, a professional can receive in one day 5 payments of €500 (a total of €2,500) completely donated to the citizens while he is burdened with almost half the commissions of those with POS payments.

The use of IRIS requires the activation of Web or mobile banking.
Payments through IRIS can be made from the customer’s mobile phone, by scanning a QR code, or by means of RF payment codes (a fairly common method in electricity, telephone, utility bills, etc.) or through the IRIS e-commerce service, if it is online stores.