API

Corporate Treasury Payment Service Provider Relationship Management

Report date: 
24 Oct 2023

Commentary

“May you live in interesting times” goes the old Chinese curse. Whether we are cursed or not, we are certainly living in interesting times.

This call focused on one area of the information revolution – Payment Service Providers

(PSPs), but it was an illuminating insight into the challenges treasurers face. The multitude of payment methodologies and PSPs are forcing treasurers to deal with many different approaches, companies and formats. Today digital sales are mostly for B2C transactions, but this is spreading to B2B as business models evolve.

As treasuries move to APIs, bots and other less structured forms of communication, everyone will face the issues discussed in this report (the full 18 page report is available to premium subscribers - enquire here for details).

The biggest issues participants raised are:

  • Ownership. Treasury clearly owns the relationship with traditional banks. But many treasurers find that marketing or other functions (notably IT) sign up the company for a PSP relationship, and then leave it for treasury to resolve the issues. Participants are beginning to lay down rules for approving new relationships, usually involving marketing and IT.
  • Management system. One participant has a rigourous process which involves marketing, IT and treasury to make sure all aspects are covered.
  • Local vs global. Some PSPs are global, while others are regional, or purely local. The purely local ones are usually left to local or regional teams to manage, while global ones are typically managed from HQ. In some cases, only local options are available: this is a challenge for centralised treasuries.
  • Global PSPs. The main providers mentioned were PayPal, Ayden and WorldPay. No-one finds they can
Please Login or Register to access the rest of this free commentary.
If you haven't previously Logged in but receive commentaries via email, simply use your email address to change your password to Log in.
Topics covered in this report: 
PSP, API, Cash forecasting, Risk - counterparty, Virtual accounts, Receivables

Please log in, or create a free account, to read the whole report summary.

Corporate Treasury Technology Roadmaps

Report date: 
1 Sep 2023

Commentary

Technology is changing the way many businesses work: with online commerce, many traditionally B2B businesses are moving to B2C. Logistics and supply chains are being transformed. Ride hailing and food delivery services operate real time payment systems. Assets we used to buy are increasingly available as a service, often linked to the internet of things.

Where are our banks in this turmoil? And how are treasurers adapting? We wanted to get a first view. Judging by the response we received, we are clearly not alone in being very interested.

This report is long – even the summary takes several pages, and it does not capture all the nuances. It is well worth reading the detail – it clearly lays out the challenges treasurers are facing.

Business transformation

For the time being, treasurers are adopting a wait-and-see approach to business changes. When the business moves to B2C, or becomes a full asset as a service enterprise, treasury will adapt accordingly. In the meantime, treasurers see no need to get ahead of the business, or even necessarily be a change agent.

On the other hand, CXC members who are in the new, online enabled industries are, of necessity, proving to be early adopters of the new technologies.

Communicating with banks

Over the years, centralised global and regional treasury management has been enabled by online banking tools with balance reporting, remote account management and payment initiation.

This has brought enormous benefits to treasury management. But it is not perfect:

  • Mostly, the data is not real time. It is often yesterday’s balance and transactions
  • There are many different tools: host to host, e-banking systems, SWIFT reporting, APIs
  • Security protocols remain a conce

Please Login or Register to access the rest of this free commentary.

If you haven't previously Logged in but receive commentaries via email, simply use your email address to change your password to Log in.

Topics covered in this report: 
API, Technology
Service providers discussed in this report: 
Kyriba, FIS, Reval, Ion, Wall Street Systems

Please log in, or create a free account, to read the whole report summary.

Treasury Policies & Processes for Crypto Transactions

Report date: 
26 Jan 2023

Commentary

This call took place five days after FTX filed for bankruptcy. However our discussion did not dwell on crypto as an investment (We haven't found a treasurer who would). The interest for treasurers is to help their companies understand the business opportunities of the metaverse, and that isn’t going away.

According to Gartner,’ [https://www.gartner.com/en/articles/what-is-a-metaverse] by 2026, 25% of people will spend at least one hour per day in a metaverse for work, shopping, education, social media and/or entertainment’, and…’A metaverse is not device-independent, nor owned by a single vendor. It is an independent virtual economy, enabled by digital currencies and non-fungible tokens (NFTs).’

So it's no surprise that many companies are developing strategies to capitalise on what could be a massive business opportunity. Participants in this call comprised treasurers representing companies at different stages of this journey, all facing the challenge that the regulatory and financial infrastructure available is at an early stage of evolution.

  • About half of the participants are still investigating the use of crypto and exploring how it works in case it does evolve within their businesses, but still not necessarily wanting to accept crypto or handle crypto within treasury operations.
  • Risk management to enable safe use in Corporate Treasury remains paramount and it isn’t easy.
  • We are seeing continued evolution around the NFT space and using crypto for settlement. But it continues to be quite limited.
  • Accounting requirements for how crypto currencies are handled are still not clear and not necessarily sustainable for the future. Regulations are going to evolve.
  • It is fascinating to hear, for the first time, crypto working capital
Please Login or Register to access the rest of this free commentary.
If you haven't previously Logged in but receive commentaries via email, simply use your email address to change your password & LogIn
Topics covered in this report: 
Wallet providers - crypto, NFT, Working Capital, Metaverse, KYC, API, CBDC, Crypto currency
Service providers discussed in this report: 
Coinbase, Mt Pelerin, Bit Panda, Etherium, Anchorage, Decentraland, Somnium Space, Coinfund, Churning Group

Please log in, or create a free account, to read the whole report summary.