large - value payments of the banking industry and their customers. the european landscape for the banking industry ’ s system might be highly diversified. the eba clearing, eaf 2 and snp, as examples of these, might dominate the market for commercial large - value payments with europe likely to remain a polycentric area needing several financial centres. cross - border retail payments are likely to be gradually integrated into net settlement systems owing to the lack of european standardisation. but there will still be a need for transformation into national standards. considering the fact that smaller banks will not have direct access to major cross - border oriented netting systems the sole use of big business partners might ultimately jeopardise their independence.

write - offs and sales of loans. the pandemic and the subsequent sharp deterioration of the economic environment was the ‘ perfect storm ’ for the european banks, affecting them across most business segments and disrupting significantly their operational capacity. the national and european authorities acted swiftly introducing unprecedented measures in order to mitigate the impact from the pandemic. these measures were in the right direction and alleviated the short - term pressure on the liquidity and capital positions of banks. however, according to the experience from past crises, such an acute economic recession is highly probable to impair the asset quality of lenders. today, just a few months after the lockdown, it is still too early to assess the impact from the pandemic on european banks, for several reasons : 1. first, there is still uncertainty about the medical factor, while there is a wide range of projections for economic activity, a key determinant of banks ’ credit losses. 2. second, there is usually a time lag between worsening macro variables and the emergence of new npls. the loan moratoria and the state support measures increase this time lag but at the same time contribute to higher uncertainty in the medium term. for example, the deferral of loan amortisation payments is an effective measure to address borrowers ’ shortterm difficulties caused by the pandemic, but could potentially create a ‘ cliff effect ’ upon the termination of measures. 3. third, some banks that were already in a fragile position before the pandemic, may have to struggle more than their peers to navigate through the crisis. for greek banks, even during the pandemic, many indicators develop in a benign way : liquidity deposits, pre - provision income, cost to income ratio etc. however, a potential creation of a ‘ new generation ’ of non - performing loans could hamper their efforts to clean up their balance sheets. greek banks are already in the process of making use of the hellenic asset protection scheme and offloading part of their delinquent loans. already, one systemic bank completed a securitisation transaction under the ‘ hercules ’ scheme and we expect that the other three systemic banks will accelerate their efforts to make use of the scheme by the end of the year or early in 2021. at the same time, banks will benefit from the reforms in the institutional framework for private debt management already made ( e. g. acceleration of liquidation of banks ’ collateral via electronic auctions,