Project Meridian FX is an experiment led by the BIS Innovation Hub's London and Eurosystem Centres together with the Bank of England, Bank of France, Deutsche Bundesbank, Bank of Italy and European Central Bank. It builds on the original Project Meridian by focusing on foreign exchange (FX)...

The retail cross-border payments market is valued at more than $800 billion of transactions per year, and is growing. Despite this, retail cross-border transactions lag domestic ones in terms of cost, speed, access and transparency because of the complex processes they involve. This complexity...

This is the 15th progress report on the harmonisation of European securities settlement published by the Eurosystem's Advisory Group on Market Infrastructures for Securities and Collateral (AMI-SeCo). With the aim of further integrating European financial markets and in line with its mandate,...

With the rapid digitization of financial transactions, central banks have given considerable focus in recent years to the research and development of central bank digital currencies (CBDCs). While CBDCs could offer several advantages, there are concerns about end-user privacy. Traditional...

In this work, we problematize the issue of the statistical visibility of the trans population in the federal government's databases and administrative records. To the extent that it is represented through informational traces or vestiges, this segment encounters problems about population...

This is the 13th edition of the TARGET2-Securities Annual Report, which now covers a sixth full year since the end of the T2S migration period. The first edition was published in 2011, a pivotal year for the finalisation of the legal and technical documentation of T2S and for the CSDs'...

This is the 13th edition of the TARGET2-Securities Annual Report, which now covers a sixth full year since the end of the T2S migration period. The first edition was published in 2011, a pivotal year for the finalisation of the legal and technical documentation of T2S and for the CSDs'...

AMI-SeCo considers the harmonisation of post-trade processes, including collateral management, to be critically important in the pursuit of financial market integration in Europe. In the area of securities settlement harmonisation, T2S has contributed significantly to the integration of...

This paper evaluates the salient forces behind a dealer-intermediary's decision to move a bilateral repo transaction with a customer into central clearing. We provide evidence that dealers turn to sponsored repo on occasions when balance sheet space is scarce, such as when there is a large...

In 2022, US financial regulators proposed to mandate a single central clearing mechanism for treasury bonds and repo transactions to stabilize financial markets. The systemic risks inherent in repo markets were first highlighted by the global financial crisis and, as a response, global financial...

This paper examines the effect of financial sanctions at the most disaggregated level possible, individual bank accounts. Using data from the Eurosystem's real-time gross settlement system TARGET2, we provide empirical evidence that sanctions imposed by the European Union on Russian banks...

This paper provides the first steps towards a theoretical and structural modelling framework through which optimal decision making in financial market infrastructures such as payments clearing and settlement systems can be assessed from a market microstructure perspective. In particular, the...

Distributed ledger technologies (DLT) are increasingly considered to enhance payment systems' and market infrastructures' functionalities like their accessibility and interoperability. We explore DLT architecture options to enable a new tiered access in the RTGS system of Chile for new payment...

We propose a flexible machine learning (ML) framework for real-time transaction monitoring in high-value payment systems (HVPS), which are a central piece of a country's financial infrastructure. This framework can be used by system operators and overseers to detect anomalous transactions,...

We build a network formation game of firms with trade flows to study the adoption and usage of a new digital currency as an alternative to correspondent banking. We document endogenous heterogeneity and inefficiency in adoption outcomes and explain why higher usage may correspond to lower...

This paper presents OVer, a framework designed to automatically analyze the behaviour of decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols when subjected to a "skewed" oracle input. OVer firstly performs a symbolic analysis on the given contract and constructs a model of constraints. Then, the framework...

A well-functioning monetary system is characterized by public and private forms of money that exchange at par as value flows freely between them. This is essential for efficient transacting and contracting in a market economy. A relevant retail public money - whether in the form of cash, a...

Programmability in payment and settlement has yet to realize its potential to support policy goals such as efficiency, safety, and innovation. This paper proposes a comprehensive framework for understanding and evaluating programmability. It explores two key dimensions: external programmatic...

This study aims to assess the extent to which blockchain technology (BCT) may constitute an alternative to the conventional stock trading system and emphasize the changing roles of the key parties. It is expected that BCT would enhance the performance of the process across the three stages (i.e....

Payment clearing is important to ensure that the payment is transferred or the cash from one bank account moves to the other bank. The banking system in Iraq follows two sorts of clearance systems which are the IBCS (Inter Bank Clearing System) and C-ACH (Check Automated Clearing House System)....

Default auctions at central counterparties (or ‘CCPs’) are critically important to financial stability. However, due to their unique features and challenges, standard auction theory results do not immediately apply. This paper presents a model for CCP default auctions that incorporates the...

Theoretically, one rationale for central clearing counterparties is the mitigation of inefficiencies associated with distressed asset sales. With novel archival data, I empirically study the first event in economic history during which a CCP successfully played this role: the global wool crisis...

In this study, we propose a method for modeling the central counterparty’s optimization problem describing the actual behavior of its margin requirement. Thus far, the central counterparty’s problems as a profit-making company and social planner have been addressed. We construct both...

Default auctions at central counterparties (or 'CCPs') are critically important to financial stability. However, due to their unique features and challenges, standard auction theory results do not immediately apply. This paper presents a model for CCP default auctions that incorporates the CCP's...

This paper proposes a unique approach to simulate intraday transactions in the Canadian retail payments batch system. Such transactions are currently unobtainable. The simulation procedure, though demonstrated in the realm of payments systems, has tremendous potential for helping with...

We address the problem of clearing mutual obligations among agents when a financial network collapses. To do so, we adopt an axiomatic approach and provide the first comprehensive characterization of the rules based on the principle of proportionality, covering the entire domain of financial...

Modernizing Canada's wholesale payments system to Lynx from the Large Value Transfer System (LVTS) brings two key changes: (1) the settlement model shifts from a hybrid system that combined components of both real-time gross settlement (RTGS) and deferred net settlement (DNS) to an RTGS system;...

Using detailed data from Canada's new high-value payment system (HVPS), we show how participants of the system save liquidity by exploiting the new gridlock resolution arrangement. These observed behaviors are consistent with the equilibrium of a "gridlock game" that captures the key incentives...

When a financial network collapses, how should mutual obligations among all agents be cleared? We study this problem taking an axiomatic approach and provide the first characterization of the family of rules based on the principle of proportionality in the entire domain of financial systems. A...