18  Although, in recent decades, reserve requirements have been used to establish a stable demand for reserves for monetary policy implementation purposes, they were a form of liquidity requirement historically. As originally constructed, they were a substantial percentage of a bank’s liability base and were intended (at least in part) to ensure that banks could meet their obligations in a timely fashion.
If commercial realities  BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  were leading to the unbundling of payments from other financial services, then it was to be expected that this business would open up to innovative and specialist providers. It also meant that existing players would need to put their own payments services on a more commercial footing.