The ERPB was instrumental in the development of the SEPA instant credit transfer scheme, which is now live, with over 1,000 providers participating. Those instant payments have been achieved without legislation, with the ECB instead facilitating dialogue and consensus between market actors. Moreover, that scheme will soon be complemented by the ECB’s new Target Instant Payment Settlement service, which is set to go live this November, providing a real-time, high-end platform for payment service innovation. The challenge for Europe Progress towards an integrated market for payments has not been without its problems. Europe still does not have an integrated, standardised card payment network, with the vision of being able to use any card at any payment terminal in Europe having yet to be realised. Europe’s largest card payment networks are still not interoperable. For example, Germany’s Girocard and France’s Cartes Bancaires account for a substantial number of card payments in the euro area’s two largest economies. However, owing to significant technical differences, a supposed lack of a business case and an absence of political will, these two networks remain separate – as do most other national card schemes. As a consequence, it is more convenient to use non-European cards when travelling across Europe. Although some standardisation work has been carried out via the European Cards Stakeholders Group, Europe still does not have its own Europe-wide card scheme, so we remain fully reliant on non-European schemes when making cross-border card payments. Although they provide a valued service, those schemes raise certain questions from a governance perspective.

Yves Mersch: Strengthening the European financial industry amid disruptive global challenges Speech by Mr Yves Mersch, Member of the Executive Board of the European Central Bank, at the European Institute of Financial Regulation (EIFR), Paris, 3 September 2018. * * * Europe’s financial industry still faces a number of challenges. Its continued weak performance, with low price-to-book ratios and meagre profitability, is ample proof of that. Some of those challenges – such as high levels of legacy assets, the need for deleveraging and the burden of stricter regulation – are a result of the financial crisis. But even before the financial crisis, the industry was facing pressure on various fronts, and those challenges are still there. In particular, fundamental technological change continues to call established business models into question. Today, I will focus on disruptive challenges that are arising in a particular area of business: digital technology. Such technology is becoming ever more important in banking and is opening the door to competition from non-banks in core areas such as payments. Cascades of complementary innovations have already fundamentally altered the payment landscape, and European banks need to act now if they want to avoid losing out to bigger international players. The euro area has been very successful in providing a top-tier foundation for innovative payment services. However, this foundation has not yet been fully utilised by European players to provide true state of-the-art pan-European services.