The Irish Payment Services Organisation Limited (IPSO) was established in June 1997.
[1] IPSO was a company limited by guarantee owned by its member banks.
[2] Its primary objective was to preserve the integrity and security of the bank payment system in Ireland - the systems used for the settlement of physical cheques as well as ATM transfers and debit and credit card purchases.
[8] IPSO also provided central programme management for key national and banking-industry policy initiatives such as the National Payments Implementation Programme (the Department of Finance's initiative to move Ireland to universal acceptance of electronic payments and migrate from cash and cheques),[9][10] Ireland's implementation of SEPA (the Single Euro Payments Area, which enables customers to make cashless Euro payments to any bank account located anywhere in the Eurozone), Chip and PIN card adoption,[11] and electronic fraud prevention.
[15] Both bankers and the media, most notably the Bank of Scotland, alleged that the IPSO made it difficult for new banks to enter the Irish market by making it slow and expensive to join the clearing organisations.