10 Years of MAPS: A Proven Reserve and Treasury Management Service, Built by Central Banks for Central Banks

This year marks an important milestone for Market Activities Processing Services (MAPS), which celebrates 10 years of successful operations supporting central banks activities within the European System of Central Banks. 

Developed through a unique collaborative model involving central banks and empowered by Nasdaq Calypso technology, MAPS has evolved into a mature and proven global Reserve and Treasury Management Service (R&TMS) serving a growing network of central banks.

Ahead of SIBOS 2026, we spoke with Jesús Benito, MAPS Product Manager, and Frédéric Drighès, Head of the MAPS Partners, about the service's journey, key achievements over the last decade and its vision for the future.

Q: MAPS is celebrating its 10th anniversary. Could you tell us more about MAPS and its mission?

Drighès: Reaching the 10-year milestone is a significant accomplishment that reflects not only the maturity, stability and resilience of the service, but also its ability to continuously adapt to an evolving environment.

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As financial markets evolve, MAPS continues to invest in scalability, cyber resilience and innovation to support emerging challenges such as new market infrastructures and tokenization initiatives.

• A major achievement has been the growth of the community itself. After the design of a dedicated MAPS Programme, from 2019 to 2026, 5 additional central banks on-boarded MAPS reflecting the trust participants place in our MAPS service offer and governance. 
• The service has continuously evolved to meet new requirements, exchange best practices and strengthen operational capabilities across the participating central banks network. A key factor behind this success has been the collaborative nature of all MAPS teams involved in this initiative behaving as a community.
• Another key factor of this success are the regular Nasdaq Calypso platform upgrades, allowing participating MAPS Central Banks to benefit from enhanced functionality, strengthened security, improved performance and continued alignment with evolving regulatory and business requirements, such as the SWIFT ISO 20022 migration.

Taken together, these achievements demonstrate that MAPS is much more than a technology platform. It is a mature and proven R&TMS that has consistently adapted to new challenges, supported a growing community of central banks and maintained its commitment to operational excellence over the past ten years.

Q: How does the MAPS model combine technology and collaboration to deliver value for central banks?

Benito: MAPS demonstrates how technology, shared services and cooperation can come together to deliver a resilient and efficient R&TMS for central banks.

What makes MAPS unique is that it is not simply a technology platform. It is a shared service where participating institutions actively contribute to governance and product development.

At its core, the service is built on a single instance of Nasdaq's Calypso Treasury Management platform, which supports the increasingly sophisticated reserve management and treasury operations of participating central banks. The platform provides a robust technological foundation for the service and supports the continuous evolution of MAPS in response to business and regulatory requirements.

Yet the value of MAPS extends far beyond technology. One of its greatest strengths is the governance model that underpins the service. Participating central banks do not simply use a common platform: They actively contribute to its governance, share business expertise and work together to define priorities for future enhancements. This ensures that the service evolves in line with real operational needs and delivers tangible benefits across participating institutions.

This approach reflects the broader spirit of cooperation within the Eurosystem. Through a common operating model, participating institutions can leverage collective expertise, exchange best practices and strengthen cooperation across the Eurosystem while maintaining the high standards required for their treasury activities.

Benito: Banco de España and Banque de France play a unique dual role within MAPS, acting both as users of the service but also as providers of production assistance as well as corrective and evolutionary services that support its continuous development. 

Like the other institutions participating in MAPS, both central banks use the platform to support their own reserve and treasury management activities and therefore share the same operational challenges, business expectations and requirements. This common user perspective helps ensure that enhancements are driven by real operational needs and deliver value across all participants.

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In parallel, Banco de España and Banque de France senior expert resources contribute to the maintenance and evolution of the service including the technical infrastructure. Their direct involvement in both the use and development of MAPS creates a strong alignment between business requirements and service delivery.

This dual role, strictly segregated, is one of the defining features of the MAPS operating model. It fosters an environment in which participating Central Banks are not simply consumers of a common service, but active contributors to a shared service that they collectively shape and continuously improve.

Q: MAPS currently serves seven central banks. How do you see the community evolving in the future?

Drighès: Over the past 10 years, MAPS has implemented and developed new central banks integration through a structured onboarding called the MAPS Newcomers Programme which has been designed in several phases to facilitate MAPS adoption, to promote knowledge transfer amongst all MAPS users (across accounting and front, middle, back office activities) to ensure smooth integration into the MAPS shared operating model via continuous specific Assistance to the MAPS Users Group. 

By combining standardization, shared expertise and common governance, MAPS enables efficient onboarding, faster implementation timelines and significant economies of scale.

This MAPS Newcomers Programme together with the MAPS Users Group assistance, the Evolution & Production Support services we provide, has enabled MAPS global service to expand while maintaining high levels of operational consistency, efficiency and quality amongst all participants. In addition, thanks to MAPS harmonization and standardization of needs and processes, MAPS global service allows efficient time to market deployments and economy of scales.

As central banks continue to explore ways to optimize resources while maintaining operational excellence, the MAPS model offers a compelling example of how cooperation can create value across multiple institutions. The combination of proven technology with Nasdaq-Calypso software, joint governance and central-bank expertise provides a strong foundation for future growth.

Looking ahead, the ambition is not simply to onboard other Central Banks from the ESCB community, as MAPS has already demonstrated its ability to do so through efficient and well‑controlled implementation projects. The objective is to broaden capabilities and further develop an ecosystem where Central Banks collaborate to shape future needs, share knowledge, strengthen cyber resilience, and drive innovation for the benefit of all MAPS members while avoiding unnecessary fragmentation of the financial industry impacting Central Banks market operations flows.

Q: What message would you like to share with central banks attending SIBOS?

Benito: The success of MAPS demonstrates the value of a cooperative approach.

The MAPS journey also highlights the value of bringing together complementary strengths: central banks defining business requirements and governance, service providers contributing operational expertise, and technology partners delivering proven software capabilities.

As the financial industry continues to evolve, trusted partnerships and shared services will play an increasingly important role in achieving both efficiency and innovation. 

The strategy of MAPS towards ESCB central banks is deliberately designed as an institutional engagement strategy, rather than a traditional commercial or vendor‑driven approach. MAPS is positioned primarily as a shared operational capability serving the public-interest objectives of the ESCB, and not as a product or standalone IT solution.

The core strategic intent is to promote MAPS as a mutualization instrument contributing to the reduction of fragmentation within the ESCB, the optimization of operational efficiency, and the convergence of practices across central banks. Engagement with central banks is therefore framed as participation in a collective service and governance model, rather than a procurement or purchasing decision.

Frédéric Drighès the MAPS Partners Manager in charge of MAPS development and MAPS User group Assistance, and Jesús Benito, MAPS Product manager, will be attending the SIBOS event in person in Miami and will be happy to provide further information to interested European central banks.