And 15 billion banknotes were handled by our branch staff last year, checked for fitness and replaced, if necessary. 4/8  BIS central bankers' speeches  Cashless payment operations are another one of our key tasks.
In tandem with our partner central banks – Banca d’Italia, Banque de France and Banco de España – we are responsible for the backbone of European payment and securities settlement operations: TARGET2 and TARGET2-Securities. Day in, day out, we process payments in TARGET2 that are worth something like 1.7 trillion euro.