ECB discloses new plans and milestones for TARGET Services
The Eurosystem has communicated the milestones in the lead up to the final migration on November 2022. The main changes can be summarised as follows:
- No milestones to reach until March 2021
- New milestones have been added (User Testing activities started, Training for user testing started, Network connectivity tests on production started, Network connectivity tests on production completed)
- Milestones not completed in 2020 will be postponed between 8 and 12 months.
With specific regard to the most operational impacts:
- NSP selection and contract preparation to be completed by 31 March 2021
- Software development for the required adaptation changes to TARGET2 to be completed by 30 June 2021
- Testing of the internal applications to be completed by 31 August 2021
- User Testing activities to be started by 1 December 2021
In addition the ECB has communicated that, as disclosed by the ECB’s Governing Council in July:
- All PSPs which have joined the SCTInst scheme and are reachable in TARGET2 should also become reachable in a TIPS central bank money liquidity account, either as a participant or as a reachable party (i.e. through the account of another PSP which is a participant)
- All ACHs offering instant payment services should migrate their technical accounts from TARGET2 to TIPS.
In order to implement the new European Instant Payments interoperability paradigm, a project has been launched starting in January 2021 where all participants must be live by 15 December 2021 and follow the additional milestones to ensure their go-live readiness in a synchronised manner across all national communities.
In summary the TARGET2 participants have today:
- 6 months to confirm, review or fine-tune their NSP choice for TARGET2
- 9 months to complete TARGET2 developments and 11 months to finalise testing
- Less than 15 months to set up their TIPS central bank money liquidity account
Many banks will be using the TARGET2/T2S Consolidation delay to absorb the impacts of COVID-19 priorities and the implementation of TIPS accounts. However, the extra time will allow participants to improve their digital transformation and consider cloud strategies, improve data management and analytics, and embrace ISO 20022 more deeply and extensively.
TAS is ready to support market participants ensure the best possible implementation of these projects, focusing on:
- NSP access in Cloud
- Intraday Liquidity
- Payments transformation
- Instant payments management in the new framework
Find out more on our dedicated page or get in touch with our experts