AIB is planning to launch a “new, next generation” app for customers in the second half of this year, marking the biggest overhaul of its mobile offering in more than a decade.
“I’m really pleased with the shape it’s taking,” chief executive Colin Hunt said in an interview with The Irish Times. “It’s going to be far more intuitive and far easier to use, and it’s going to be more encompassing of all aspects of a person’s financial life.”
A pilot phase of the app will be released initially with a small group of customers with a view to having it on offer to all customers later in 2026, a spokesman for the bank said in response to follow-up questions.
“We have been very thoughtful about this change to ensure this is not just about delivering short-term functionality,” he said. “We took a ground-up approach to fundamentally change the way we deliver our digital services to ensure we are consistently able to evolve to meet our customers’ needs over the long term.”
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AIB declined to comment on specific features that will be available in the new version of the app, or the cost of the rewrite.
However, the spokesman said customers will have access to “much deeper insights” into their finances and key services “will feel much simpler”.
Changes to the foundations of the app will mean AIB can consistently deliver future innovations in a much faster and secure way, moving from quarterly updates to updates every few weeks where appropriate, he said.
The project falls within the annual €300 million budget AIB set for technology investment in its current strategic plan, spanning 2024 to 2026.
A review of Irish banking apps last year by Bonkers.ie, the financial services and utilities comparison website, said that while AIB’s existing mobile app was the best of the three domestic banks, it fell far short of the offering of neobanks Revolut and N26.
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Customers of AIB, which launched its first app in 2011, and other Irish banks have also had to deal with periodic outages and glitches with mobile banking services. Last Friday, thousands of customers with android devices were unable to use its mobile app and online banking for hours as the bank dealt with a technical issue.
Zippay, the planned new integrated mobile payments service being launched by AIB, Bank of Ireland and PTSB “in early 2026”, will be integrated into AIB’s existing app, as its launch is scheduled to take place in advance of the bank’s new app.
While the digitisation of banking continues at pace, a number of European governments, including those of Austria, Finland and the Netherlands, have recommended in the past year that households hold small amounts of cash in case of disruptions to online payment systems or other emergencies.
An ECB paper published in September said eurozone households should keep emergency cash at home, arguing that banknotes remain a vital safeguard when digital systems fail.
It followed advice from the European Commission earlier in the year that citizens to keep enough cash, food, water and medicines to cope with at least 72 hours of service disruption. The war in Ukraine, the Covid-19 pandemic, natural disasters such as wildfires and floods, and April’s power outage across Spain and Portugal, have highlighted Europe’s vulnerabilities.
The Irish Government is also preparing advice for households to keep small amounts of cash in case of emergencies. Tánaiste Simon Harris said in November, days before he also became Minister for Finance, that the Office of Emergency Planning was working on the matter.
