Targeting the future with TARGET Services

July 2018

The Eurosystem has developed a strategic plan to enhance and optimise its financial market infrastructure. Over the coming years, it will introduce new services for instant payments settlement and real-time gross settlement (RTGS) as well as consolidate some components of its existing and upcoming market infrastructure, such as reference data and liquidity management. With these actions, the Eurosystem aims to address the evolving market needs while striving for operational excellence and efficiency.

A new service called TARGET Instant Payment Settlement (TIPS) will be launched on 30 November 2018. It will enable payment service providers to offer pan-European fund transfers in central bank money – in real time and around the clock. TIPS will provide efficient processing, flexible participation structure and attractive pricing to its participants. It is optimally placed to facilitate wide reachability and thus to become the instant payment solution in the European market.

The Eurosystem’s RTGS services are also being reviewed as part of the TARGET consolidation project that will run well into 2021. The objective is to modernise the infrastructure behind TARGET2, or T2, and to offer new services tailored to the needs of its participants.

The TARGET consolidation further aims to bring closer together the operational aspects of all of the Eurosystem’s market infrastructure services. It will introduce a new centralised account structure and liquidity management to ensure seamless interconnection between the different services (T2, T2S and TIPS).

We have introduced a new logo to embrace all TARGET Services. It symbolises the interconnectedness among the services and the continuity between old, existing and upcoming ones.

The individual services: T2 (RTGS services), T2S (securities settlement) and TIPS (instant payment settlement) are also represented under the TARGET umbrella.

This has already been implemented for the new TIPS service and will be effective for T2 and T2S as of 22 October 2018, when the old logos will cease to exist.