European Central Bank To Launch Probe Of 10-Hour Payments System Outage

The European Central Bank (ECB) has plans to independently investigate an incident that affected its TARGET2 real-time gross settlement system on Oct. 23 this year, which resulted in a near 10-hour outage, according to a press release.

An initial probe determined that a software defect in a specific device was what caused the incident, the release stated. The independent investigation will look into the other incidents affecting TARGET Services in 2020, including anything that directly or indirectly affected TARGET2 Securities, which is operated by the Eurosystem.

In addition, the review will let the Eurosystem address the issues and learn from them, looking into the “robustness” of the model for business continuity, the adequacy of regular recovery tests and the efficiency of managing change and the communication protocols, according to the release.

“The Eurosystem is committed to identifying lessons learned from the recent incidents in full transparency and taking action accordingly in order to continue providing highly efficient and reliable financial market infrastructures to European agents,” the release said.

The outage came at an auspicious time, as Europe is battling a second wave of COVID-19. Europe’s economy contracted 11.8 percent in the second quarter of this year, PYMNTS recently reported.

The Eurosystem is dedicated to their goal of being “highly efficient and reliable financial market infrastructures to European agents.”

TARGET2 is the top European platform for processing larger platforms, the release stated. It is owned and operated by the Eurosystem and allows bank submissions from 19 central banks and commercial banks in 20 countries.

The central findings of the investigation will be made public by the second quarter of 2021.