Payments and settlement systems covers the infrastructure through which money moves, including real-time gross settlement systems, national payment switches, automated clearing houses, card and instant payment schemes, and mobile-money platforms.
The Capability Development Index tracks the events that move a capability — operational use, technical breakthroughs, procurement decisions and the industrial base behind them — and places each on the record with the date it happened.
Recent developments cover the current period. Historical developments are the inflection points that produced Payments & Settlement Systems as it stands today.
STEP2 was introduced as an upgrade in 2003, operating as a clearing house dedicated exclusively to euro-denominated transactions. It became the only pan-European automated clearing house (PE-ACH) in operation, consolidating cross-border retail euro clearing within a single infrastructure.