Insights on TARGET2 performance in 2022

16 June 2023

TARGET2 registered 102 million transactions in 2022, the highest traffic since the creation of the euro and the first common TARGET system in 1999. In the
23^rd TARGET Annual Report, the activity and developments of the Eurosystem’s real-time gross settlement (RTGS) system over 2022 are presented.

TARGET2, recently replaced by the new RTGS system T2, remained one of the largest payment systems worldwide, connecting over 41,000 banks. In its last full year in operation, TARGET2 processed an average of almost 400,000 transactions per day, which equates to a value of €2.2 trillion.

The report gives insights on TARGET2 traffic and performance and the main developments that took place in 2022. There are also dedicated sections on i) the evolution of the TARGET Instant Payments Settlement (TIPS) service, ii) the improvements to the TARGET Services communication tools, iii) the impact of the invasion of Ukraine and iv) the effects of the ECB’s monetary policy decisions on TARGET2 volumes. The year also saw the Eurosystem devote efforts to preparing for the migration to the new T2 system and the enhanced technical and functional aspects of the TARGET Services, which went live on 20 March 2023.

T2 is owned and operated by the Eurosystem. It is an RTGS system that settles payments related to the Eurosystem’s monetary policy operations, as well as bank-to-bank and commercial transactions. A centralised liquidity management tool brings optimisation to the way participants manage their liquidity across the TARGET Services. The platform has multicurrency capabilities and relies on the ISO20022 messaging standard, as is the case with TARGET2-Securities and TIPS.