Share your insights or perspective on the financial matter presented in the input.

Why are interbank payment (settlement) systems closed for weekends and holidays?
TARGET2 is a high value realtime settlement system across Europe and for this to be open on weekends would mean all the Banks including Central Banks in the Euro Zone work. Quite a few times to manage intra day liquidity, banks borrow from each other, hence there is an active monitering of the liquidity by Banks. The borrowing happens over phone and fax and the lending bank sending a high value transaction that credits the borrowing banks. These is the day to day job of treasury group [highly paid individuals] to manage liquidity. Now if on weekends the volume is less, it does not make sense to keep these people, the cost of supporting this for very insiginificant business gain is not driving to build such systems.  On the other hand on retail transactions, say Cards [Debit / Credit], ATM, the value is not high and hence there is no treasury function involved and there is a huge need, everything is automated. So no issues.