therefore, an additional european card scheme can have a lot of benefits. three initiatives are currently under way with a view to creating an additional european card scheme : the euro alliance of payment schemes ( eaps ), monnet and payfair. further initiatives are obviously not excluded. it seems that the development of a proper financing model is probably the most important issue from banks ’ point of view. and here again, uncertainty about multilateral interchange fees is considered an obstacle to any progress in this field. the criticism that there is a lack of clarity in this area does not fully recognise the commitments made recently by mastercard and visa europe on multilateral interchange fees. one should also recognise that the european as well as national competition authorities have already provided some guidance. however, here too, regulation might provide a solution of last resort and a possibility to look at the business model in the context of other business rules and market circumstances that presently stand in the way of an effective market providing efficient services against optimal prices to consumers and other customers. overall, i believe that an additional european scheme – safe and efficient as the best performing existing ones – is a necessary element of an integrated and competitive market. separating card schemes from processing entities the concept of separating schemes from processing entities is one of the core elements of sepa to guarantee open access. the sepa credit transfer and direct debit schemes are built on this principle. this concept should be applied in the card market, too. indeed, banks should have a range of options to choose from as regards the processing of card payments. the separation of schemes from processing entities has many dimensions, comprising operational, informational, financial / accounting, commercial and legal separation. major efforts need to be made by individual schemes in order to achieve effective separation in these various domains. three things are needed in the area of card processing. 1. first, the processing of card transactions should use the same set of message standards as the processing of direct debits and credit transfers ( i. e. the iso 20022 standard ). 2. second, a framework is needed for the processing of card transactions. 3. and third, the various infrastructures need to develop the rules and standards that are needed in order to establish technical interoperability. in december 2009 the european payments council ( epc ) agreed to update the pe - ach / csm framework to include card transactions. however, work still needs to take off on this. cards standardization another important issue is cards standardisation

, ” canadian journal of economics 51, no. 1 ( february 2018 ) : 127 – 155 ; l. ferrara and p. guerin, “ what are the macroeconomic effects of high - frequency uncertainty shocks, ” journal of applied econometrics 33, no. 5 ( august 2018 ) : 662 – 679 ; r. sekkel and s. jo, “ macroeconomic uncertainty through the lens of professional forecasters, ” journal of business & economic statistics 37, no. 3 ( 2017 ) : 436 – 446. s. s. poloz, “ monetary policy as risk management ” ( speech to the canadian club of montreal, montreal, december 12, 2013 ). s. s. poloz, “ integrating uncertainty and monetary policy - making : a practitioner ’ s perspective, ” bank of canada staff discussion paper no. 2014 - 6 ( october 2014 ). - 6policy making. this does not mean rejecting the use of models in decision making. in fact, the bank ’ s various models provide the base case that serves as the starting point for governing council ’ s deliberations. they are also used to simulate alternative scenarios, which is an excellent means of reaching a fuller understanding of the risks we face. 9 the essence of risk management is identifying the most important risks and uncertainties around the outlook. we examine the probabilities that the risks will be realized, consider alternative futures related to uncertainties and think about the potential consequences of making a policy error. we then choose a policy course that weighs these risks and uncertainties in order to best manage them. this process can entail a degree of flexibility around the inflation target itself, allowing inflation to return to target more slowly or quickly than on average, while keeping in mind that our target sits within a control range of 1 – 3 percent. given all the uncertainties and risks, it does not make sense to think a single, optimal path for our policy interest rate will be consistent with achieving our inflation target. it makes no sense to try to engineer such a path with precision. instead, we recognize that for every base - case economic projection, a wide range of possible interest rate paths could ultimately be broadly consistent with the inflation target. we weigh the various risks associated with things we do not know and then take actions that are based on a nuanced balancing of those risks. 10 in doing so, we often use several smaller, specialized models to augment the input from our