Like the retail payment market, the European securities settlement infrastructure has remained highly fragmented despite the establishment of the single currency. To overcome the fragmentation, the Eurosystem in its operator role has launched the TARGET2 Securities project.
To explore recent payment developments, it may help to distinguish among the markets for different types of payment transactions. Although the consumer-to-business (C2B), person-to-person, and business-to-business (B2B) categories likely break down when pushed too far, they can provide a convenient organizing framework for identifying payment transactions with some common characteristics.