Banking

Ian Guider: Irish banks will rue misguided decision to abandon payments app revolution

The lenders are making so much money that they don’t need to take on the fintechs but that short-sighted decision could come back to haunt them

Revolut, with its boast of 2.5 million Irish customers, and the rest of fintechs, must be laughing all the way to the bank. Picture: Getty

It was late summer in 2020 when a senior banker called me to talk about a plan being hatched by a number of lenders to take on Revolut.

The upstart app was scooping up thousands of customers every week, driven by features like instant payments to other users.

Back in 2019 four Irish banks looked at teaming up to launch their own rival to it, only to shelve the idea at the start of the ...