The Currency was founded by Tom Lyons and Ian Kehoe in September 2019 as a paywalled online news journal. Both Lyons and Kehoe had previously worked on the Business Post. When Business Post owners, Key Capital, put out feelers regarding the sale of the paper in 2017/18, Lyons and Kehoe contemplated a management buyout but were apparently unable to find a way to make the numbers work. Key Capital subsequently sold the paper to Kilcullen Capital’s Enda O’Coineen instead.

Clearly keen to take on the reins of their own news outlet and inspired by the example of digital native news outlets like The Information, The Athletic and Politico, the pair left the Business Post to establish The Currency.

The Currency currently employs 8 journalists and is largely - though not exclusively - oriented towards business, finance and economics-related stories, often adopting a long-form approach. The Currency is one of a handful of Irish-based, Irish-owned and Ireland-facing digital native media outlets in Ireland. It is included in the Top 30 digital newsbrands in Ireland listed in the Reuters Digital News Report Ireland 2023. The Currency reports having 6,000 subscribers. According to the 2023 Reuters Digital News Report , 1% of those surveyed had used it to access news in the previous week.

For a period from September to December 2019 until 2020, journalist staff on radio stations owned by Communicorp were instructed to avoid inviting any journalists from The Currency onto any Communicorp station shows. At the time, the then chairwoman of the Communicorp Group, Lucy Gaffney explained the decision on the grounds that the Group did not wish to allow journalists from a competing media outlet on their stations. (This prohibition did not extend to journalists from other competing media outlets with the specific exception of the Irish Times, journalists from which had been barred from Communicorp since 2017.) The ban prompted an investigation by the compliance committee of the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland but the investigation was suspended in December 2019 when Communicorp wrote to the regulator to inform them that the ban had been lifted. 
In March 2019, the owner of Communicorp, Denis O’Brien lost a defamation action taken against the Sunday Business Post for a 2015 article written by Tom Lyons about a number of businessmen including Mr O’Brien. The editor of the Sunday Business Post at the time was Ian Kehoe.