CFOs rank metrics, analytics and reporting as top priorities for 2025

CFOs and finance leaders rate metrics, analytics and reporting as their top focus area for 2025, reflecting an emphasis on delivering insight to improve business performance according to Gartner, Inc.

The October 2024 survey of 251 CFOs showed that finance transformation ranks much lower as a priority for CFOs in 2025, replaced by a focus on AI adoption in finance, which ranked fourth overall.

“The survey showed the most CFOs since 2014 prioritising enterprise growth,” said Dennis Gannon, vice president of research in the Gartner Finance Practice. “The marked return of growth and cost pressures mean that many CFOs are planning to be ruthless in delegating finance transformation.”

“This shift in priorities reflects two trends: First, CFOs are now delegating day-to-day finance transformation activities to dedicated finance transformation leaders,” said Gannon. “Second, CFOs are increasingly recognising that their time is best spent on the challenging, unanswered questions on finance’s evolution, which in 2025 will centre more on the use of AI than on traditional finance automation and technology.”

Beyond improving the use of data and analytics to drive growth and adopting AI for various use cases in finance, CFOs and finance executives are also focusing on talent and leadership. The profile of finance talent continues to evolve and requires a new perspective on how to find, engage and retain talent, either by upskilling existing talent or recruiting differently to attract digital talent.

“CFOs expect one in two finance employees to be digital talent by 2027,” said Gannon. “Given that digital talent currently makes up less than 20% of the finance function, there’s clearly much work to be done.”

The survey also showed that CFOs recognise their own leadership profile needs attention in 2025, with an expanded CFO role creating a need to influence across the entire organisation, raising the bar for CFO leadership effectiveness. Finance talent management also climbed in importance as CFOs confront an expected uptick in attrition of longer-tenured finance workers while evolving their value proposition for digital finance talent.

 

Chainlink, Banco Inter, Microsoft and 7COMm support trade finance use case in Drex pilot

The Central Bank of Brazil (BCB) has selected Banco Inter alongside Microsoft Brazil, 7COMm and Chainlink to build a trade finance solution as part of the second phase of Brazil's DREX, Brazilian digital currency's pilot. The solution leverages blockchain technology and oracles to automate supply chain management and improve trade finance processes. The goal of the pilot is to demonstrate the automated settlement of agricultural commodity transactions across borders, across platforms, and via different currencies.

As part of this initiative, Chainlink's Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP) will enable interoperability between the Drex of Brazil Central Bank and a foreign central bank, ensuring that transactions are compatible and settled efficiently. The pilot will involve tokenising an electronic bill of lading (eBoL) on-chain and using supply chain data to trigger payments to exporters throughout the shipping process. The solution will demonstrate how blockchain-based trade finance unlocks Delivery versus Payment (DvP) and Payment versus Payment (PvP), ensuring greater efficiency in the global supply chain, as well as security and transparency around the international trade of agricultural commodities. 

Chainlink CCIP is positioned to offer infrastructure for DREX, as well as other central bank digital currencies (CBDC) and tokenised assets, by enhancing liquidity through smooth token transfers across various blockchain networks. This approach can help expand market reach by allowing enterprises to access a wider blockchain ecosystem while also streamlining the integration of blockchain technology with existing backend systems.

Microsoft, a long-term proponent of blockchain innovation and an active early participant in DREX, is providing cloud services for the project. Banco Inter will lead implementation efforts on the DREX platform in Brazil solely. 

“Banco Inter sees Phase 2 of the DREX CBDC project as an exciting moment for Brazil,” commented Bruno Grossi, Head of Emerging Technologies, at Banco Inter. “We see collaborating in this project with technology leaders like Microsoft and Chainlink Labs as a transformative opportunity to expand market reach and improve the health of the Brazilian market.”

 

Mastercard’s MTN connects to J.P. Morgan’s Kinexys for settlement

Mastercard’s Multi-Token Network (MTN) has connected to Kinexys Digital Payments as a payment settlement solution to enhance the availability of B2B cross-border payments to business applications on MTN.

Kinexys Digital Payments is a next-generation payment rail powering real-time value transfer using commercial bank money, offered through Kinexys by J.P. Morgan, the firm’s blockchain business unit. Mastercard’s MTN brings together a set of API-enabled, blockchain-based tools and standards for innovative business models under one platform.

By integrating Mastercard MTN's connectivity with Kinexys Digital Payments, mutual customers of MTN and Kinexys will be able to settle B2B transactions through a single API integration.

“At Kinexys, we believe our solutions can play a transformative role in the ecosystem for digital global commerce and digital assets, where the value proposition of commercial transaction venues is enhanced by the availability of commercial bank payment rails that can natively integrate with any digital marketplace or platform,” said Naveen Mallela, Co-Head of Kinexys by J.P. Morgan. 

 

APP scam losses to hit $7.6bn by 2028

Authorised push payment (APP) scam losses are on the rise, expected to climb to $7.6bn by 2028 across six leading real-time payment markets (US, UK, India, Brazil, Australia and UAE), according to the latest Scamscope report from ACI Worldwide, in partnership with GlobalData.

APP scammers prey on trust by deceiving individuals into willingly transferring funds to them. This trust-based manipulation makes APP scams particularly challenging to detect as the transaction appears legitimate and bypasses traditional fraud detection systems and controls. As rapid global adoption of real-time payments transforms the speed and velocity of how money moves, enabling faster and more accessible transactions, scammers are exploiting the immediacy of these transactions to steal funds before they can be traced, spurring growth in real-time payment APP scams. 

The Scamscope report projects that APP scam losses through real-time payments will see a combined 2023-2028 compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 17% versus 12% CAGR for total APP scam losses worldwide over the same period and will comprise 80% of total APP scam values by 2028.

Financial institutions also face significant erosion of trust and rising customer attrition as consumers fall victim to APP scams. The report reveals that 25% of scam victims will leave their current financial institutions, and around 20% close their accounts without opening new ones. Government mandates that penalise non-compliance with fraud prevention measures and require victim reimbursement underscore the urgency for financial institutions to strengthen their defence and ensure compliance. Artificial intelligence (AI)-driven fraud management systems can help analyse transaction data, flag anomalies, and facilitate real-time collaboration with other banks.

“Integrating AI in financial services is a double-edged sword, both in enabling sophisticated financial crimes and fortifying defences against them,” said Cleber Martins, head of payments intelligence and risk solutions at ACI Worldwide. “Scammers are using AI to boost inherited trust to unprecedented levels, automating hits and driving more effective social engineering techniques. The rise of real-time payment APP scams requires a coordinated cross-industry defence to share precise and collective intelligence in real-time. By breaking down silos and fostering cross-border collaboration, mule networks can be dismantled to better protect consumers.”

 

GTreasury integrates with PNC Bank embedded banking solution

GTreasury and PNC Bank have announced an integration with PNC’s embedded banking solution, PINACLE Connect, and GTreasury’s treasury and risk management platform.

Through this expanded relationship, GTreasury and PNC Bank’s shared clients now have access to PNC’s treasury services directly within the GTreasury treasury and risk management platform. Clients can streamline their operations, create efficiencies, and eliminate the need to swivel between various partner platforms by integrating key PNC banking services, including:

• Payment automation (ACH, wire, and real-time payments initiation).
• Reconciliation using real-time payment status updates.
• Real-time and historical balance and transaction reporting to streamline cash management.

Clients should benefit from a simplified onboarding process that significantly reduces implementation time and the technology resources required to complete an integration between PNC Bank and GTreasury.

“Integrations like the one we’ve established with PNC are essential to providing treasury teams and the office of the CFO with the readily available tools required to optimise efficiency,” said Victoria Blake, Chief Product Officer, GTreasury. “PNC is a recognised leader in the embedded finance space, making them ideal to work with to expand the transformative technology benefits our mutual customers can enjoy.”

 

Australian banks launch fraud and scams intelligence-sharing network

Australia and New Zealand Banking Group (ANZ), Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA), National Australia Bank (NAB), Suncorp Bank (Norfina Limited), and Westpac have announced they have joined BioCatch Trust Australia, a pilot of the world’s first inter-bank, behaviour- and device-based, fraud and scams intelligence-sharing network.

The network adds an additional layer of behavioural- and device-based protection for customers at the above-named banks against fraud and scams by assessing in real time the potential risks associated with the accounts to which customers direct their domestic online payments within BioCatch Trust Australia. If the network identifies risks associated with a receiving account, it provides this intelligence to the sending bank in real-time, allowing the sending institution to review the transaction before any money leaves the sender’s account.

BioCatch Trust combines behavioural intelligence with digital session, payment, account, device, and non-monetary event intelligence to assess the potential risks of receiving accounts on the network before an eligible payment is processed. This helps financial institutions prevent those types of scams where the fraudster manipulates the victim outside of a digital banking session (many scams originate via an email, text message, or social media post). The network accomplishes this while using proven pseudonymisation technology to help protect the identities of those customers within the BioCatch Trust network.

 

Nacha adds Stripe as a preferred partner for ACH experience

Nacha has announced Stripe as a Preferred Partner for ACH Experience. This partnership recognises Stripe's commitment to providing seamless, efficient ACH payments and underscores its role in helping businesses reduce costs, grow revenue and operate more effectively on a fully integrated platform.

Stripe's ACH solutions are designed to maximise payment conversions while keeping costs low, making it easier for businesses of all sizes to leverage ACH payments. By integrating ACH payments into its platform, Stripe enables businesses to manage transactions efficiently.

Stripe's ACH solutions offer businesses a platform that is designed to simplify payment processes, helping them take advantage of the opportunities presented by ACH payments.