D)  distributed ledger technology (DLT)  •  What may have a much more profound impact on the financial market infrastructure in the years to come is distributed ledger technology (DLT);  •  DLT allows the verification of financial transactions in a decentralised way;  •  Thus, they have the potential to reshape the mechanisms for making transactions;  •  the Eurosystem needs to reflect on the possible impact and use of DLT in its three capacities as operator, catalyst and overseer;  •  as the discussion on DLT is proceeding at great pace, I would like to point out that in the meantime, we have established an organisational structure within the ECB and launched dedicated work streams on DLT around the central bank roles of operator, catalyst and overseer in the field of market infrastructures:  [operator role:] •  we study the potential impact on the Eurosystem market infrastructure, i.e. TARGET2 and T2S;  2  BIS central bankers’ speeches  •  work is conducted in the context of our strategic reflections around “Vision 2020”, on which I will elaborate in a minute;  •  adopting DLT for the Eurosystem’s market infrastructure would obviously imply that central bank money is transacted via DLT; this may have implications on the central bank functions which go beyond the operational and technical sphere; therefore, it is important to structure the discussion along the lines of who could access the central bank ledger.
Part 1: The digitalisation of financial services and their potential impact on Europe’s market infrastructure •  Technical innovations in financial services will be among the key focal points for the Eurosystem over the next few years;  •  In my article, I address four key topics where innovation in financial services will have to be tackled in the coming years:  A)  pan-European instant payments;  B)  person-to-person mobile payments;  C)  the emergence of new (non-bank) service providers;  D)  distributed ledger technology (DLT). A)  Pan-European instant payments  •  In 2015, the Euro Retail Payments Board invited the European Payments Council to develop an instant payment scheme for euro payments based on the SEPA credit transfer;  •  the implementation of this scheme is foreseen by November 2017;  •  By that time, end-user solutions for instant payments in euro should be made available at the pan-European level by the payment service providers;  •  This means that by November 2017 the European financial market infrastructure has to be ready to clear and settle instant payments on a pan-European scale;  •  As an operator of market infrastructure, the Eurosystem is exploring how to support the settlement of pan-European instant payments.