customer demand for convenience, speed and efficiency. new technical solutions have even further nurtured these developments. given the prevalence of smartphones and other mobile devices, today ’ s customers are used to doing things on the spot. they want to make payments instantly, anytime, and anywhere, and expect them to be as readily available as instant messages, instant videos or instagram. the epc ’ s creation of the sct inst scheme came in response to these users ’ expectations. and instant clearing and settlement infrastructures have already been established, most notably tips. but, in the long run, simply being reachable for incoming payments initiated by other banks ’ customers will not be enough. i am convinced that banks need to offer even more innovative and efficient solutions for their customers and i would advise them to embrace the instant payments space as an opportunity to remain relevant players in the payments business. one area in which solutions have already emerged is payments between individuals, or so - called person - to - person payments. but we also need solutions encompassing payments at merchants, at the point - of - interaction ( poi ), both physical and virtual. in fact, some end - user solutions for instant payments at the point of interaction are already emerging across europe. but they tend to be limited geographically, meaning that each solution is only usable in one or a few ( neighbouring ) countries. this certainly 2 / 4 bis central bankers'speeches does not point to an integrated european payments market. in addition, in many instances, such regional solutions are not interoperable with each other. for example, although many solutions use qr codes that consumers can scan with their mobile devices, they have not implemented a common standard for these codes. so, there is a clear need for standardisation to enable european consumers to pay eu - wide using interoperable solutions. in this context, the erpb set up a working group to analyse in detail the barriers to the pan - european reach of point - of - interaction solutions. it will report back on the outcome of this work by november 2019. i hope to obtain useful input from this work. because if we do not achieve interoperability among national and regional solutions, as difficult as it may be, we run a serious risk of fragmentation of the european market. let me explain why i am concerned about the risk of increasing fragmentation through national point - of - interaction instant payment solutions. at the moment, users who want to pay effortlessly at european level have

- pillar approach to policy - making. but note the difference between a monetary pillar and a genuine “ lean - against - the - wind ” attitude, as was advocated by the early participants in the debate that i was mentioning before. it was discussed in a recent ecb paper. 7 it is not asset prices per se that a central bank should incorporate in its policy framework. after all, the equilibrium value of assets – particularly real assets, such as claims on companies and houses – is difficult to compute and is certainly state - contingent. so, there is little merit in an unconditional monetary policy response to asset price changes. the policy response should be conditional. and the critical condition that a central bank should ascertain before judging if an asset price trend is policy - relevant is whether the market trend is causing – and / or is being fed by – a concomitant monetary imbalance. a market bubble that progresses in symbiosis with a credit bubble, and which then spills over into excess money creation, is certainly a policy - relevant event. being alert to the monetary imbalance means for a central bank being better able to discriminate between benign and less - benign phenomena in financial markets. this being said, monetary policy needs support in its ex ante action to resist the formation and build - up of toxic financial imbalances. there is a clear need for a corresponding policy framework to foster financial stability ; we need to understand how it interacts with monetary policy in order to minimise frictions between the two and exploit possible synergies. 2. macro - prudential policies and monetary policy decisions the goals of macro - prudential policies can be broadly defined as preserving financial stability by reducing the pro - cyclicality of the financial sector, and improving its resilience to adverse shocks. however, even though the goals are clear in theory, the means to reach them are still open to discussion. monetary policy has been at the centre of the debate in economics for almost a century, and there is now a high level of consensus about its goals, its tools, and how to gauge its effectiveness. however, the macro - prudential framework is still fuzzy, and being developed with the benefit of hindsight after the crisis that started in 2007 with the bursting of the subprime bubble. i will describe briefly the main tools that are being developed, dividing them into those that address pro - cyclicality and those that attempt to improve resilience