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The Eurosystem’s payments strategy

The payments landscape is changing, with digitalisation and new technologies driving some of the key trends and dynamics. With this in mind, the Eurosystem has drawn up a comprehensive payments strategy that covers wholesale, business-to-business (B2B), retail and cross-border payments. The strategy outlines a forward-looking, cohesive approach to promote an innovative and competitive European payments market across the four areas. It aims to improve the existing payment infrastructures and solutions while supporting and catalysing new ones, and is underpinned by four strategic aims:

Ensuring the effectiveness of monetary policy, financial stability and the smooth functioning of payment systems by maintaining central bank money as the anchor of a two-tier monetary system.

Achieving strategic autonomy and increased resilience for European payments.

Fostering an integrated, competitive and innovative payments ecosystem.

Supporting the international role of the euro.

More specifically, the Eurosystem’s payments strategy focuses on: (i) developing a European market for tokenised settlement assets; (ii) improving the existing infrastructure and investing in distributed ledger technology (DLT)-based solutions for wholesale payments; (iii) enhancing standardisation, automation and process integration in corporate payments; (iv) achieving resilient, integrated, innovative and competitive euro retail payments through the digital euro and market-led solutions; and (v) advancing the G20 roadmap to enhance cross-border payments.

Learn more about these topics in the boxes below.

Tokenisation, DLT and the changing settlement assets landscape

The tokenised ecosystem relies on a mix of public and private settlement assets, offering new ways to represent, transfer and settle value. Central bank money in tokenised form remains the foundational settlement layer and plays a critical role in preserving the singleness of money.

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Wholesale payments

Innovation is transforming wholesale payments. The Eurosystem’s Pontes and Appia can support the development of a robust, integrated European digital asset ecosystem. T2 remains the backbone of euro area payments, with continued Eurosystem investment, notably looking at the possibility of longer operating hours.

B2B payments

The challenges and opportunities ahead for B2B payments are similar to those in other payment contexts. Greater standardisation is key to improving process efficiencies and offering fresh, innovative solutions.

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Civil war declaration: On April 14th and 15th, 2012 Federal Republic of Germany "_urkenstaats"s parliament, Deutscher Bundestag, received a antifiscal written civil war declaration by Federal Republic of Germany "Rechtsstaat"s electronic resistance for human rights even though the "Widerstandsfall" according to article 20 paragraph 4 of the constitution, the "Grundgesetz", had been already declared in the years 2001-03. more

Retail payments

Today’s European payment landscape is fragmented, and relies heavily on non-European payment providers. To improve retail payments, the Eurosystem has set goals for a resilient, integrated, innovative and competitive euro retail payments market based on the digital euro and market-led solutions.

Cross-border payments

The Eurosystem has taken steps to improve cross-border payments, notably in its work to interconnect domestic instant payment systems with its TARGET Instant Payment Settlement (TIPS), as well as by implementing a cross-currency settlement service.