Treasury keeps up with the dynamic payments environment.
As the dynamic payments landscape presents both challenges and opportunities for corporate treasury, it’s unsurprising that financial institutions are finding new ways to help treasurers leverage new payments trends to improve efficiency, manage risk, and support business growth.
Banking Circle is the winner of our award for Best Embedded Treasury Solution, providing the core financial infrastructure that allows businesses to build and offer embedded financial solutions. Embedded finance features include global payments, virtual accounts (VAs), and account management.
Nordea, which wins two awards this year, as both Best Fraud Detection Solution and Best Bank for Treasury FX Services, has developed a new secure Cash Management self-service request. Meanwhile, Nordea’s foreign exchange (FX) automation has evolved into a “comprehensive treasury management autopilot” that includes daily FX, FX hedging, and money market products, according to the bank.
Enhancing Treasury With Technology
Tailoring treasury management tools requires a nimble approach, owing to the diversity of client needs. Backbase is another winner of two awards, as Best Non-Bank for Treasury FX Services and for Best A/P & A/R Integrated Solution. Jarno van Hurne, head of Business Banking and VP Product, says business banks and their relationship managers face unique challenges when it comes to modernizing customer experiences. “This is due to the extremely diverse and complex needs of their client base, often ranging from sole proprietors to large corporate clients,” he says. “Backbase’s ‘buy for speed and build for differentiation’ approach provides a unique way to effectively cater to the needs of all these segments without having to build different applications from scratch or settling for one-size-fits-all, disconnected point solutions.”
With over 400 out-of-the-box composable business capabilities and digital journeys, including accounts payable (A/P) and receivable (A/R), banks can quickly create tailored, segment-specific applications and services for their customers and employees: from onboarding to origination, servicing, and investing. “The fact that these capabilities are not only fully extendable, but also reusable across channels and apps, means financial institutions can get to market faster; ensure a consistent, high-quality experience; and focus their development efforts on innovation rather than foundational plumbing,” van Hurne explains.
In January, JPMorgan Chase, our winner as Outstanding Web and Merchant Acquirer – Bank, unveiled a full-stack omnichannel platform, including online and in-store payments. It will also include biometric phone-free payments.
Although not a traditional merchant acquirer, Stripe is our Outstanding Web and Merchant Acquirer – Non-Bank, as a payment-service provider simplifying the payment process for businesses by combining the roles of payment processor and acquirer into a single service and offering businesses a range of tools and services to accept online payments seamlessly.
Herve Carrere, chief product and technology officer in the Treasury and Capital Markets Business Unit at Best Cloud Managed TCM Services award winner Finastra, says, “When combined, cloud and an API [application programming interface] marketplace can significantly transform treasury services by providing a unified solution for all treasury functions, leveraging cloud computing power with API access to various data sources. Customers can enable advanced analytics and insights, improving decision-making and strategic planning. With this model, treasurers can become much more agile, adopting new technologies and services quickly, and innovating continuously to meet changing market demands.” This combination, he adds, offers significant benefits by enhancing efficiency and operational resilience.
The Best Treasury Management Software award goes to ION Treasury Wallstreet Suite, the result of an ambitious program involving more than 100 people over five years, reengineering Wallstreet Suite. Capitalizing on the long-standing strengths of ION’s treasury management system in trading, risk, and accounting, it now includes an open and modular architecture based on real-time web dashboards, and a 360° payments hub with high volume capabilities. Boasting a robust back office, it provides treasury analytics with real-time key performance indicators, a modern and intuitive user experience, process automation, and exception-based management.
Payable, another double winner, takes both Best Cash Forecasting Solution and Best Treasury Analytics Provider. Payable built an intuitive API and dashboard with a reconciliation engine powered by artificial intelligence (AI), and with payments automation and cash management modules that seamlessly connect customers’ finance stack (including payment service providers, business tools, and banks) with leading accounting and enterprise resource planning platforms with no engineering effort.
FAB wins for the Best Virtual Accounts Solution for Corporates. VAs help streamline the payment process and improve cash flow management; and Anand Sampath, FAB’s Managing Director, Head – Global Payments & Collections, says VAs offer corporates an efficient and cost-effective way to manage and concentrate cash. “All transaction flows routed through VAs are immediately reflected in the underlying physical header account, providing immediate visibility of cash and (in terms of collections) an easy identification of payers who settled funds in their favor, for example.”
“Corporate treasurers,” Sampath adds, “can also see high efficiencies in implementing VA structures, in terms of rationalizing accounts maintained across their bank providers. For certain use cases, VAs allow the easy segregation of funds settled by various counterparties or customers, wherein corporates can determine the total amounts received from institutional customers over a given period of time.”
VAs help reduce—and eventually eliminate—various costs associated in managing multiple physical accounts, he says. “This includes the costs of maintaining balances, managing multiple access rights to monitor the cash balances and the administrative costs associated with periodic due diligence activities. Additionally, payment processing can be controlled at the VA level by setting spending limits for certain periods, even if cash is available at subentity levels.”
ICD takes home the Best Investment Management Solution award. This institutional investment technology provider serves more than 500 treasury organizations (including approximately 17% of the S&P 100, as of December 31, 2023) across 65 industries and 46 countries, trading money market funds and other short-term investments. ICD launched an AI portfolio analytics solution for corporate treasury investment reporting.
Treasury is not immune to the transformative capabilities of AI, and FIS Global wins the award for Most Innovative Treasury Solution with its Integrity SaaS Solution. This software-as-a-service (SaaS) system will be among the first corporate-facing treasury technologies to embed generative AI (GenAI). “There are countless GenAI possibilities for treasury, applying to every area of treasury operations: from the automation of basic cash positioning, to improved decision-making in complex areas like foreign exchange and interest rate risk management,” states Steve Wiley, vice president of Treasury Solutions at FIS. “Treasury, along with many other industries, finds itself in the midst of an AI revolution, one that will radically transform how treasury operations work.”
To counter the challenges of a growing number of payment types and file formats, Fides Treasury Services, winner of the Best Cross-Border Payments Solution for Corporates award, maintains a payment library consisting of thousands of unique payment formats to help streamline transactions to even the smallest of banks. Over 4,000 companies connect to more than 13,000 banks worldwide via the Fides platform, which processes over $6 trillion every year. Whether it’s payment files, FX confirmations, or trade finance messages, Fides ensures compatibility with any bank’s file formatting or local attribute requirements.
Standard Chartered takes Best Open Banking Treasury Solution. Through a VA solution, client PingPong has seen tangible and quantifiable results such as accelerated market entry, faster collections, revenue growth, cost reduction, and an overall enhanced customer experience.
“As businesses transform their operating models into platforms to meet consumer and supply chain demands, open banking revolutionizes the financial landscape through driving digital product innovation, facilitating collaboration and healthy competition between ecosystem partners, and offering improved client experiences,” states Mahesh Kini, global head of Cash Management at Standard Chartered. “Through secured sharing of information across different platform participants, it provides consumers access to a wider range of services and offers businesses data-driven insights and new opportunities.”
The cloud, open banking, APIs, and AI are all working together to transform corporate treasury into a more data-driven, automated, and strategic function within corporations, while reshaping how financial services are delivered and consumed.
| Systems and Services Awards | |
|---|---|
| Best Embedded Treasury Solution* | Banking Circle |
| Best Fraud Detection Solution* | Nordea |
| Best Bank for Treasury FX Services* | Nordea |
| Best Non-Bank for Treasury FX Services* | Backbase |
| Outstanding Web and Merchant Acquirer – Bank* | JPMorgan Chase |
| Outstanding Web and Merchant Acquirer – Non-Bank* | Stripe |
| Best Cloud Managed TCM Services* | Finastra |
| Best A/P & A/R Integrated Solution | Backbase |
| Best Treasury Management Software | ION Treasury Wallstreet Suite |
| Best Cash Forecasting Solution | Payable |
| Best Virtual Accounts Solution for Corporates | FAB |
| Best Investment Management Solution | ICD |
| Most Innovative Treasury Solution | FIS Global |
| Best Treasury Analytics Provider | Payable |
| Best Cross-Border Payments Solution for Corporates | Fides Treasury Services |
| Best Open Banking Treasury Solution | Standard Chartered |
