The shift towards electronic payments and the emergence of many new providers of e-payments services is enabled by the back-end plumbing provided by the real-time gross settlement (RTGS) systems maintained by central banks. To this end, central banks are also investing to improve the speed of these systems.
For instance, the European Central Bank recently launched its new market infrastructure service – TIPS (TARGET Instant Payment Settlement) – to enable payment service providers to offer fund transfers to their customers in real time on a 24–7-365 basis.