The system that allows banks to transfer money to each other within the euro zone suffered four outages in 2020. The last, on October 23, blocked transactions for almost ten hours.

Too much breakdown. The European Central Bank (ECB) announced on Monday the opening of an independent investigation to determine the causes of several breakdowns that affected the payment system between banks in the euro zone, Target2.

In 2020 alone, this system – which allows banks to transfer large amounts between themselves or on behalf of their customers across the euro zone on a single platform – broke down four times. But it was following the last episode, on October 23, that the ECB decided to act. And for good reason: that day, “an incident affected the real-time gross settlement system […], causing a breakdown of nearly ten hours”, specifies the ECB in a press release. During this period, no interbank transaction in the euro zone could be carried out.

According to the first elements at its disposal, the ECB claims that a “software defect” within the network linking the banks constituted the “technical cause” of this incident. The institution did not wish to specify the amounts blocked during this breakdown, but they could be very significant: Target2 usually carries out several billion euros of transaction per minute.

In fact, neither merchants nor individuals are affected by this type of outage. The consequences on the financial system itself are minimal since payments are only delayed for the time of the breakdown, we are assured within the ECB. But these episodes do not go unnoticed by banks. “After October 23 and the three other episodes, the ECB must show the banks that the problem is taken very seriously, confides a European source. The reputation of the eurosystem, the guarantor of the financial stability of the euro zone, is at stake. »

Technical control

The investigation, entrusted to an independent auditor, must in particular make it possible to determine whether a basic problem is at the origin of these breakdowns or whether it is the national central banks and their teams who are in question.

Target2, which replaced the old interbank payment system in 2007, is indeed piloted by the French, German and Italian central banks. "This investigation is like a technical control which will allow all the bolts to be tightened", confides this source. Target2 is not the only interbank payment system to experience misfires, however. Last year, its American equivalent, Fedwire, suffered two outages.

The question of the soundness of the ECB's payment systems is essential at a time of major projects in the sector. The Central Bank indeed supports the project of a new standard of European payments able to compete with Visa or MasterCard and launched by about twenty European banks (EPI). In addition, the European institution has also recently embarked on the race for digital currency, sensing the risk in terms of sovereignty in the face of private initiatives such as Facebook 's Libra. And in this field, to seduce users - individuals or companies - the key words are trust and technology.