It would also mean that the Swedish payment infrastructure is to a greater extent harmonised with the rest of the EU, which can increase competition and the quality of the payment services offered to Swedish customers. RIX plays a central role in the Swedish payment system The payment system the Riksbank currently supplies to financial institutions is called RIX. Institutions wishing to become participants in RIX enter into an agreement with the Riksbank. The Riksbank is a public institution, which means that entry to the RIX system is given on competitively neutral terms to institutions meeting the conditions that are set. It is difficult to overestimate the importance of RIX for the Swedish economy. From the time that RIX opens at 0700 hours on a typical working day until it closes at 1700 hours, a good 20,000 payments are settled to a total value of more than  2 According to the international standards on financial infrastructure issued by the CPMI-IOSCO, systemically im-  portant infrastructures should settle in central bank money whenever it is practically possible. 3 The Eurosystem consists of the European Central Bank and the national central banks in the euro area. 2 [8]  SEK 600 billion.4 RIX is the hub of the Swedish payment system and it is therefore also logical that the functions and accessibility of RIX will be in focus when the Riksbank upgrades its capacity to meet the challenges of the future payment market. The Riksbank is not in any unique situation in this respect.
It is of course impossible to know how the payment market will look in 5-10 years’ time, but a qualified guess is that instant payments will become increasingly important. New payment products that are introduced can be settled immediately if the client so desires, for instance, through online banks, “point of sale” or e-commerce platforms. Many payments that are now cleared by batch clearing will probably move to instant settlement. For instance, since 2018 it has been possible to make payments by Swish to the Swedish Tax Agency. It is also conceivable that a mixture of batch-based and instant settlement may arise, where payments are settled individually but at predetermined points in time. In the long run, it is not improbable that some of the payments now made separately in RIX will move to other platforms that enable instant payments. It is clear at any rate that the taxonomy used for payments (large-value/retail, instant settlement/batch settlement and time-critical/not time-critical) will become more blurred. The Riksbank is standing at a crossroads here. Should the Riksbank continue to supply solely an infrastructure equivalent to RIX that is primarily suitable for largevalue, time-critical payments during office hours on weekdays and leave the other settlement of payments between financial institutions to the private sector? Or should the Riksbank also supply an infrastructure that enables settlement in central bank money in seconds 24/365? Or to put it a different way: Should the Riksbank's payment system be open all the time? Do we need a settlement service 24/365?