Domestic interbank payments and cross-border express transfers managed that failed to activate on Monday morning have resumed normal operation. Bank customers have received interbank retail payments since 12 o'clock.

TARGET2-Eesti and ESTA resumed operation at 11.20. The first retail payment order from a commercial bank was processed at 11.26.

On Monday morning the trans-European system for express transfers, TARGET2, failed to activate properly; the Eurosystem (the euro area's central banks and the European Central Bank) have solved the problem and currently TARGET2 is operating as usual.

Due to the failure in TARGET2, the Estonian subsystem TARGET2-Eesti also failed to operate. This also caused a malfunction in domestic interbank retail payments, as commercial banks could not transfer their collaterals to Eesti Pank, which are necessary for the settlement of interbank retail payments.

By now, both interbank retail payments and express transfers function as usual.

Eesti Pank apologises for the failure.

Background

On working days, TARGET2-Eesti - the Estonian subsystem of the TransEuropean Automated Real-time Gross Settlement Express Transfer System TARGET2 - is usually launched at 8:00 a.m. and finishes work at 7:00 p.m.

TARGET2-Eesti enables to perform real-time trans-European payments in euro, which means that it can be used for cross-border and domestic euro settlements. Payments via TARGET2 are processed individually and the system is intended for settling express payments.

On working days, Eesti Pank's Settlement System of Ordinary Payments (ESTA) is usually launched at 8:30 a.m. The first settlements between commercial banks are performed by the central bank at 9:00. Before launching the ESTA the commercial banks are required to transfer a sufficient amount of collateral to the central bank's account.

Commercial banks use the ESTA when their clients make a domestic interbank payment. Retail payments are settled through the ESTA 10 times a day. On average, around 100,000 payments are settled through the ESTA every banking day with a total value of 130 million euro. The ESTA's system participants are banks and the Estonian Central Register of Securities.

For more information about Estonian interbank payment and settlement systems, see the web site of Eesti Pank.

Further information:
Viljar Rääsk
Public Relations Office
Telephone: +372 668 0745, +372 527 5055
E-mail: [email protected]