ECB to probe major payment system outage

FILE PHOTO: Specialists work on a crane in front of the European Central Bank (ECB) in Frankfurt, Germany, January 23, 2020. REUTERS/Ralph Orlowski

FRANKFURT (Reuters) – The European Central Bank said on Monday it was launching an independent review of a major outage of its payment systems and other incidents affecting its settlement platforms this year.

The ECB’s Target2 platform, which processes large-value payments in euros, was down for almost 10 hours on Oct 23 due to what the central bank now says was a “software defect”.

The central bank said the probe would now look into this and other disruptions, including some on its Target 2 Securities platform.

“The independent review will…look into the robustness of the business continuity model, the adequacy of the regular recovery tests, the efficiency of the change management procedures and the communication protocols,” the ECB said.

It added it would publish the main findings of the review by June.

Reporting By Francesco Canepa; Editing by Balazs Koranyi

source: reuters.com