As you hear my address, you may feel a sense of déjà vu, as if you heard the same words yesterday in the Finance Minister's speech. But I can assure you that the two speeches were written separately and any similarity is purely coincidental. In any case, it bodes well for the continued cooperation between the Bank of Israel and the Treasury.
TARGET provides the Eurosystem with a means to settle its own monetary policy operations, and also delivers to the European banks a real-time, gross settlement system in central bank money. However, private citizens and businesses in euro-area countries require a comparable facility for making low value – or “retail” – non-cash payments in euro.