T2
Introduction
Technological evolution in finance has gained momentum in recent years and to meet changing market demands the Eurosystem has decided to consolidate TARGET2 and T2S, in terms of both technical and functional aspects. The new consolidated platform offers a state-of-the-art set of market infrastructures comprising a new RTGS system and optimized liquidity management across all TARGET Services. The consolidated TARGET Services make use of the ISO20022 messaging standard and is compliant with the latest cyber resilience directives. The consolidated services went live on 20 March 2023.
TARGET services – T2
The family of TARGET Services consists of a Central Liquidity Management Module (CLM), a new RTGS system, TARGET2-Securities and TARGET Instant Payment Settlement (TIPS).
What is T2?
T2 consists of the Central Liquidity Management Module and the Real-Time Gross Settlement module.
The Central Liquidity Management (CLM) is the hub of all liquidity in the services, allowing participants to steer, manage and monitor their central bank liquidity across all TARGET Services. To that end participant can open a main cash account in the books of their national central bank. On this account they will settle all central bank operations, manage their (optional) credit line and transfers liquidity to and from the other services (RTGS, T2S and TIPS).
RTGS provides the settlement for real-time interbank and customer payments and ancillary system transactions. A Party may open more than one RTGS DCA for a dedicated purpose, depending on its business needs (e.g. for AS transactions, for the payment business of a branch/entity).
Credit Institutions that are subject to minimum reserve requirements can use the combined liquidity on their main cash account(s) in the CLM and their dedicated cash accounts in the RTGS, T2S and TIPS to fulfill this obligation.
The consolidation consists of a set of common components whose functions are shared by the CLM, RTGS, T2S and TIPS. The Eurosystem Single Market Infrastructure Gateway (ESMIG) ensures a network provider agnostic access to the TARGET Services. The Common Reference Data Management (CRDM) is used for the setup and management of any reference data object that is used by the services. The invoicing of the different services is done through the common Billing component. Finally, a Data Warehouse is available with the historical data of the different modules from the TARGET Services and a Legal Archiving component.
A more detailed overview of the consolidation can be found in the Business Description Document.