Europe's banking sector must improve cross-border payment systems or risk losing out to global competitors in the drive to restructure the industry, European Central Bank Executive Board member Gertrude Tumpel-Gugerell said on Monday.
In an interview with the Financial Times, she said the launch of a single euro payment area would bring significant efficiency gains.
"At the moment, European banks are in the driving seat," she told the newspaper in a report carried on its Web site (http://www.ft.com).
"If they were too slow, global competitors and not European banks themselves would bring about consolidation and restructuring in Europe's banking sector."
The ECB said on Friday that banking is the most fragmented of financial markets in the eurozone.
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