The ECB launches its Target Instant Payment Settlement (TIPS) system, which facilitates instant money transfers between banks and allows end users connected to those banks to make instant retail payments across the Euro zone.

Report in the FAZ. Last year’s report by Mehreen Khan in the FT.

From the ECB’s website:

TIPS was developed as an extension of TARGET2 and settles payments in central bank money. TIPS currently only settles payment transfers in euro. However, in case of demand other currencies could be supported as well. …

… a number of national solutions have been developed, or are under development, across the EU. A challenge for the Eurosystem is to ensure that these national solutions do not (re)introduce fragmentation … TIPS aims to minimise this risk by offering a service that can help ensure that any bank account holder in Europe can be reached. …

Participating payment service providers can set aside part of their liquidity on a dedicated account opened with their respective central bank, from which instant payments can be settled. It is only possible to add funds to TIPS accounts during TARGET2 opening hours.

As settlement in TIPS takes place in central bank money, participation in TIPS depends on being eligible to access central bank money. For this reason, in order to open an account in TIPS in euro, an institution needs to fulfil the same eligibility criteria as for participation in TARGET2.

Banks pay at most 0.2 cent per transaction during the first two years of operation.

See also the blog post on the Bank of England’s related, but different “interledger” program.

Central bank digital currency gets closer by the day …