# Irish Central Banker Urges Safeguards for Tokenized Payments

By Riza Dagoc

Canonical URL: https://www.tokenpost.com/news/regulation/35902
Published: 2026-10-20T19:31:50.000Z
Updated: 2026-10-20T19:31:50.000Z
Section: Regulation

> Fraudulent payments at Irish-resident providers totaled €179.04 million in 2025, while losses from payment fraud reached €112.7 million.

Central Bank of Ireland Deputy Governor Mary-Elizabeth McMunn urged payment firms to build stronger safeguards into tokenized services as Irish-resident payment service providers recorded a 27.2% jump in fraudulent payment value in 2025.

McMunn spoke at a payments conference in Dublin on Oct. 14. She identified protection of customer funds, operational resilience and fraud prevention as priorities as firms develop products using tokenization, distributed ledger technology and artificial intelligence.

The value of payments classified as fraudulent reached €179.04 million in 2025, up from €140.80 million in 2024. Fraudulent e-money payments climbed 57.7% to €40.42 million.

Losses from payment fraud, a separate measure, totaled €112.7 million in 2025. That was 45.6% above the €77.4 million recorded in 2024. The larger €179.04 million figure represents the value of fraudulent payments, rather than the amount lost.

By transaction count, payment fraud remained rare, at roughly one in every 10,000 transactions in 2025. That low rate coincided with increases in both fraudulent payment value and losses. The statistics cover payment service providers resident in Ireland.

In a 2026 survey of 2,002 Irish households, nearly half of respondents under 35 identified mobile wallets as their main payment method. Three in five respondents preferred digital bank transfers for payments to other people. McMunn said households placed the most value on “security, reliability and fraud protection.”

She warned that payment services developed too quickly without being able to work together could fragment the wider system. McMunn also called for board oversight of technology risks and recovery planning.

For wholesale transactions, the Eurosystem launched Pontes on Sept. 21 to connect market platforms using distributed ledgers with TARGET Services. The connection enables settlement on those platforms in central bank money. Pontes is separate from plans to test a digital euro for retail payments.

The European Central Bank plans to begin a 12-month digital euro pilot in the second half of 2027. Only after the relevant regulation is adopted will it decide whether to issue a digital euro.