Juan Bolona, Global Head of Cash and Trade Solutions at BNY, explains that as payments and settlement move toward a 24/7 model, treasury teams should start building the foundations for real-time cash forecasting today—well before the market forces a wholesale shift.
The pace of change across technology and market infrastructure is accelerating, driven by the shift towards an always-on financial ecosystem that never closes for weekends or holidays. Soon, securities will be bought and sold, trade finance executed, and risk managed continuously, every day. For organizations and their treasurers, this demands more than a simple upgrade. A genuine treasury transformation is needed to keep pace.
As payments and settlement shift to real time, liquidity can move at any hour of the day. This creates fresh demands on treasury functions: it increases timing risk, raises the cost of idle cash, and forces faster decisions.
At the same time, advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and agentic AI are raising both expectations and capabilities around automation, responsiveness and intelligent execution, further accelerating the move away from traditional treasury operating models.
Treasury teams do not need to transition overnight. But there are clear benefits to building the foundations for intraday liquidity management today. Doing so helps organizations engage with emerging 24/7/365 trends as they develop, positioning them to optimize liquidity, manage risk and capture new opportunities.
Why Legacy End-of-Day Treasury Models Must Change
Historically, treasury management has revolved around highly structured daily processes because payments moved via checks, Automated Clearing House (ACH), and other batch-based systems. Liquidity management was therefore designed around predictable settlement windows, cut-off times, and end-of-day optimization.
In a typical cycle, securities were settled in the morning, payroll and supplier payments were made through the day, and excess cash was swept between accounts to cover shortfalls or maximize investment opportunities. By the close of business, treasury teams sought a defined position: collections accounts at zero, payables accounts funded, investments maximized and overdrafts minimized.
This model endured for decades, even across large multinationals operating multiple entities, currencies and jurisdictions. While the complexity varied, the underlying philosophy remained the same because payment systems themselves operated within fixed business-day cycles. So treasury teams focused on end-of-day positions rather than continuous intraday visibility.
These models have now begun to change—and in a world where money can move at any time, treasurers need greater visibility into liquidity positions and flows throughout the day. In response, real-time cash forecasting is fast becoming a foundational treasury capability, enabling organizations to anticipate liquidity needs, optimize funding and investment decisions, and maintain control as cash positions evolve in real time.
Intraday Liquidity Management Becomes Critical
Several factors are driving the need for continuous liquidity management. The most significant is the gradual extension of operating hours across both payments and capital markets, increasing the need for firms to monitor, forecast and mobilize liquidity throughout the day.
This shift creates new timing risks and operational challenges for treasury teams. Even organizations still operating on traditional infrastructure may receive or send funds outside normal treasury hours, because real-time payment rails keep working across weekends and holidays.
For example, a company receiving funds at the weekend might find that liquidity sits idle until Monday morning if no automated liquidity structures or rules are in place. Equally, unexpected intraday payment activity could create funding gaps, overdraft requirements or operational challenges if positions are not monitored continuously. Beyond the direct cost of intraday overdrafts, insufficient liquidity could result in delayed or failed payments, potentially disrupting suppliers, customers and broader supply-chain activity.
In parallel, regulators and central banks are placing greater emphasis on intraday liquidity risk—incentivizing banks to manage balance-sheet resources more efficiently and, in some cases, pass associated costs through to clients.
Building Infrastructure for Continuous Treasury
In practice, the transition to continuous liquidity management is complicated and requires more than access to faster payment rails. Treasury management systems (TMS), enterprise resource planning (ERP) platforms, and liquidity structures must evolve to provide greater real-time visibility and automation.
Deepening the challenge, organizations do not want treasury operations staffed continuously outside normal business hours. This means application programming interfaces (APIs), automated sweeps, and rule-based liquidity structures are becoming foundational banking capabilities.
The next logical extension is agentic AI, where AI-powered agents analyze information, make intelligent decisions and act autonomously, helping organizations manage growing complexity without round-the-clock human oversight.
As treasury operations become more automated, new forms of digital money could extend these capabilities further. For example, tokenized deposits, smart contracts and digital payment infrastructure may enable more programmable approaches to real-time treasury and liquidity management.
These changes, however, are unlikely to occur through the wholesale replacement of existing infrastructure. Traditional models, 24/7/365 environments and emerging digital asset infrastructures are expected to coexist for an extended period—reflecting the different speeds at which organizations modernize. Treasury operating models will therefore become more hybrid, requiring firms to manage liquidity, payments and risk seamlessly across multiple environments. Interoperability will, in turn, become pivotal.
So, for financial institutions, the challenge extends beyond enabling always-on payments to helping clients operate across multiple liquidity environments with a unified view of cash, risk, and funding. This requires interoperable infrastructure that connects traditional treasury models with real-time payment rails and emerging digital capabilities.
BNY’s approach acknowledges this need: supporting traditional treasury operating models while building technology for real-time payments and settlement, intraday liquidity management, and tokenized payment capabilities, while remaining connected to existing infrastructure. The objective is not to force a shift to a single model, but to help clients navigate change with greater flexibility, visibility and continuity.
From Reporting to Operational Strategy
Real-time cash forecasting is quickly moving from a “nice to have” reporting tool to a core treasury capability. While many treasury operating models remain built around end-of-day processes today, the forces driving change are only beginning to emerge. The continued expansion of always-on financial infrastructure, advances in agentic AI, and the development of tokenized forms of money are all expected to increase the pace at which liquidity moves through the financial system over the coming years.
The implication is not immediate revolution, but gradual evolution. The priority for treasury teams is to begin building the foundations that will enable them to adapt as these developments materialize.
The benefits are clear: organizations that can forecast cash positions more accurately, automate liquidity movements and optimize funding decisions may reduce idle balances, lower funding costs and operate with smaller liquidity buffers. Those that begin developing these capabilities today will not only unlock these advantages sooner, but will also be better positioned to capture the opportunities created by a more connected, always-on financial ecosystem. Read more about the rapid shift underpinning the move to intraday forecasting and liquidity management in BNY’s new e-book Payments Without Pause: The Journey to a 24/7/365 Treasury and Working Capital Ecosystem
