DLT advances from market experiments to treasury applications

Cross-border payments, collateral mobility, intraday liquidity and tokenised fixed income offer the clearest near-term opportunities for companies exploring distributed ledger technology, according to research from two European financial associations. The Association for Financial Markets in Europe (AFME) and the European Association of Corporate Treasurers (EACT) set out the findings in ‘DLT & the Future of Corporate Treasury and Financing’. Their report examines how DLT, tokenisation and AI could change payments, liquidity management, working capital finance and access to debt and equity markets.

Evidence gathered by the associations suggests DLT is moving beyond capital markets experiments towards production-grade applications. Shared ledgers and tokenised cash could support faster settlement, improve the movement of cash and collateral, reduce reconciliation work and make liquidity decisions more responsive.

Four benefit areas emerge from the research: faster and more predictable payments, more productive use of cash and collateral, less trapped liquidity alongside stronger working-capital and supply-chain finance and more flexible access to funding and capital markets. These changes could shorten the gap between payment instruction and usable cash while reducing buffers held against uncertain settlement timing.

Existing regulated infrastructure and live market activity make the four near-term uses suitable starting points, the report says. Companies could work through banks, market infrastructures and technology providers to test settlement speed, collateral availability and funding outcomes before committing to wider integration.

Wider applications considered include trade and invoice finance, project finance, private credit, private equity and public equity. AFME and EACT argue that shared records could replace slow, sequential and reconciliation-heavy workflows with more automated processes, while giving authorised participants clearer information and audit trails.

François Masquelier, chair of EACT, said: “Treasurers have spent decades managing the inefficiencies created by time, geography, and fragmented financial systems. DLT offers the possibility of eliminating many of those frictions altogether. That alone makes it a development no treasury leader can afford to ignore. As financial markets move towards tokenised, real-time, and programmable money, treasury teams that engage early will help shape the future rather than adapt to it.”

Recommendations position DLT as a treasury and financing capability that should sit within strategy, investment and systems planning. Organisations should first identify costly operational problems, including trapped cash, slow cross-border payments, inefficient collateral, paper-based trade flows, repeated reconciliation or inflexible funding routes.

Selected use cases should then move through targeted pilots and phased integration with treasury management systems and wider enterprise architecture. Such an approach allows finance teams to test practical value while limiting disruption to established controls and operating processes.

Interoperability between DLT platforms and suitable tokenised settlement assets remain the principal barriers to scale identified by AFME and EACT. Corporate participation in infrastructure design and trials will therefore influence whether emerging solutions can function securely across markets rather than remain isolated within individual networks.

Near-term value will depend on choosing problems where faster settlement, programmable cash or shared records can produce measurable gains, then connecting those experiments with the company’s liquidity, funding and technology plans.

 

FedNow prepares US leg of cross-border payments

Federal Reserve Financial Services is preparing to extend the FedNow Service to cross-border transactions, giving participating financial institutions an instant-payment route for the US domestic leg of international transfers while retaining correspondent banks for movement between countries.

FedNow will process only the domestic portion of each transfer. Its overseas leg will move through whichever established cross-border arrangement the participating institution chooses, preserving the correspondent banking model used across global payments, including Fedwire.

A group of early adopters will soon test enhanced FedNow message formats for sending and receiving that US leg. The tests will cover sending and receiving institutions. Every FedNow participant is expected to have an opportunity to adopt the messages after initial testing.

Nick Stanescu, chief FedNow executive, described the development as the service’s first move beyond its domestic focus. “After several years focused on growing the domestic instant payments market, this is an important first step towards meeting the global needs emerging across our ecosystem,” he said.

Potential uses include international payroll, corporate payments and global treasury management, alongside time-sensitive disbursements such as property transfers and insurance claims. For globally active companies, faster processing of the US leg could reduce uncertainty around payment timing and improve visibility over incoming or outgoing funds.

End-to-end speed will still depend on the correspondent channel handling the international portion. Banks adopting the functionality will therefore need to connect FedNow’s enhanced messages with their existing cross-border arrangements, compliance screening, reconciliation and customer reporting.

Payall, which is preparing to integrate the capability, plans to use it to make the US leg more transparent, separate complex payment chains and screen each party. Its proposed model would digitise risk and compliance processes around the transfer.

That distinction matters for corporate users. FedNow could accelerate and standardise one part of an international payment, but the overall transaction would still span separate domestic and correspondent components, leaving banks responsible for linking the messages, controls and customer experience.

Availability remains contingent on the necessary approvals under Federal Reserve Regulation J and Operating Circular 8. Regulatory clearance and participant testing must therefore be completed before the capability becomes a generally available FedNow function.

If adopted broadly, the change would give banks a common instant-payment component for the US side of selected international flows. Its treasury impact will depend on bank adoption and on how smoothly that component works with correspondent arrangements chosen for the overseas leg.

 

Europe tops corporate investment ranking despite internal frictions

International companies rank Europe as the world’s most attractive investment region, but cross-border frictions, costs and slow approvals continue to weaken its appeal. Deutsche Bank’s Global Sentiment Survey on Europe 2026 found 35% placed Europe first, ahead of Asia-Pacific excluding China at 24% and North America at 19%. The Middle East attracted 10%, China 6% and Latin America 5%.

Europe has gained weight in investment decisions. Some 81% said the region had become more important over the past three years, including 28% who described it as much more important. Only 3% reported a decline. Among companies already invested in Europe, 45% ranked it as the most attractive region, compared with 15% of businesses planning their first investment.

Expansion intentions were widespread: 61% already operated in Europe and planned expansion over the next five years. Another 33% were planning or considering entering Europe, while only 6% of existing investors had no expansion plans. Of companies operating in Europe, 73% sell goods or services to customers there and 59% have sales or distribution teams. Some 99% regarded Europe as important to consumer-market growth over the next three to five years.

Industrial expectations point to a larger shift. Just 19% of companies already active in Europe manufacture there, yet 92% of respondents considered the region important for production, research and development and supply-chain stability over that period. A 51% majority rated that role very important.

Germany appeared in the top three target markets of 56% of respondents, followed by the UK at 47% and France at 35%. Growth opportunities were viewed as a European advantage by 74%, while 71% cited innovation, particularly alongside AI. An equal proportion regarded the region as resilient to economic and geopolitical challenges.

Internal barriers tempered that enthusiasm. Cross-border frictions weakened Europe’s attractiveness to a large or very large extent for 43%, while another 42% reported some effect. Fewer than half saw an advantage in labour costs, at 42%, the tax environment, at 44%, or energy costs and the speed of approvals and permits, both at 47%.

Alexander von zur Muehlen, member of Deutsche Bank’s management board, said Europe “still has ground to make up when it comes to competitiveness and business conditions”, calling for reforms to support investment.

Conducted in July and August, the survey covered 1,200 senior leaders at companies with at least 100 employees across 13 non-European markets. Every participant already operated or invested in Europe, or was considering doing so within five years, so the results do not represent all companies in those markets. Converting that appetite into factories, research sites and regional operations will depend on whether Europe can reduce the cost and complexity of operating across borders.

 

Bank payment speeds lag corporate cross-border expectations

Businesses expect cross-border payments to move far faster than banks deliver, with the gap encouraging greater use of non-bank methods, research commissioned by Nium has found. Celent surveyed 210 businesses and 210 banks across 17 markets. Some 65% of businesses wanted international payments completed within minutes or instantly, but only 18% said their banking partners provided that speed.

Only 29% of banks believed corporate clients expected such rapid transfers, revealing a mismatch between business demand and providers’ understanding of it.

Greater choice is already changing payment behaviour. Almost two-thirds of businesses, 64%, used at least one non-bank method for outgoing international payments, while more than 15% of surveyed cross-border volume moved through non-bank channels. Separately, 49% expected their reliance on banks to decline in the coming years.

Even so, banks remain important to corporate payment relationships. Some 69% of businesses said bank networks needed to improve their cross-border offerings, showing that corporate demand for better bank services remains strong.

Speed was only part of the demand for greater certainty. Ease of payment was the leading consideration for 32% of businesses when selecting a cross-border method, compared with 19% that ranked total cost first. Respondents also wanted better cut-off times, visibility over arrival times and cost transparency.

Failed transactions carried measurable operational consequences. Some 34% identified vendor or partner dissatisfaction and attrition as the largest effect, while 28% cited delayed orders and supply-chain disruption. Based on corporate respondents’ payment volumes, failure rates and repair costs, Celent estimated that failures cost the average surveyed business US$108,823 annually.

Commercial opportunity remains for banks. Half described cross-border payments as an area of great opportunity, while 53% planned to expand through technology and partnerships. Additional or related banking services would strengthen loyalty for 58% of corporate respondents.

Regional results exposed an especially wide speed gap in Asia-Pacific, where 73% wanted payments completed within minutes or instantly but only 10% received that service. Europe’s corresponding figures were 60% and 20%. In the US, 78% said related services would encourage loyalty to their bank.

Anupam Pahuja, chief business officer at Nium, said: “The challenge now is making those options work together without adding more complexity, while giving businesses the choice, speed, and certainty they expect.”

Covering North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, Latin America and the Middle East, the findings indicate that banks can still protect their cross-border relationships. Closing the speed and certainty gaps will become increasingly important as corporate customers distribute transactions among competing providers.

 

CFOs shift AI ambitions towards forecasting and insight

Finance teams plan to shift AI investment towards forecasting, insight and scenario modelling, although those applications take longer to deliver value than the automation projects dominating current adoption. Gartner’s survey of 160 senior finance function leaders found report creation was the most widely pursued use case, cited by 43%. Accounts payable automation followed at 38%, with numerical data extraction and retrieval at 35%.

Accounting reconciliations and error or anomaly detection each stood at 33%, while data management and accounts receivable automation were at 31%. Financial forecasting attracted 24%, insight generation 22% and scenario planning just 14%.

Investment intentions tell a different story. Scenario planning led planned future use at 75%, followed by financial forecasting at 73% and insight generation at 69%. Plans for accounts receivable automation reached 63%, while 61% intended to pursue data management and augmentation.

Expected value arrived sooner from established productivity applications. Numerical data extraction had the shortest average period at 9.3 months, followed by accounts payable automation at ten months. Report creation and accounting reconciliations both averaged 10.2 months.

Error and anomaly detection required an estimated 10.5 months, while accounts receivable automation took 10.6 months. Timelines then lengthened to 12.2 months for forecasting, 12.3 months for data management and 12.4 months for insight generation. Scenario planning was slowest at 13.7 months.

Marco Steecker, senior director analyst in the Gartner Finance practice, said the attraction of faster returns should not narrow CFOs’ ambitions.

“CFOs should not let the appeal of quick returns crowd out more complex use cases that take longer to mature but can improve decision making, manage risk and support revenue growth,” he said.

Portfolio discipline will become more important as finance functions broaden their use of AI. Gartner advised CFOs to set realistic value expectations, identify underperforming initiatives and decide which underlying capabilities warrant further investment.

Skills remain a constraint. Gartner said acquiring specialist talent had historically been a major barrier, but growing access to agentic coding tools had made AI literacy the more pressing challenge. Practical project assignments, controlled experimentation and short workplace activities were recommended to build employees’ confidence and ability.

Conducted between January and April 2026, the finance research formed part of a wider survey of 1,303 senior functional leaders across ten business functions. Its findings suggest CFOs must balance faster operational returns with the longer development periods needed for AI to support planning, risk and commercial decisions.

 

Goldman Sachs sees ECB rates peaking below market bets

Goldman Sachs Research expects the European Central Bank to raise interest rates once more in December, but doubts that borrowing costs will climb as far as current market pricing implies. Its economists forecast a 25-basis-point increase in the deposit rate, taking it from 2.5% to 2.75%. Resilient euro area activity and hawkish communication underpin that call, after economic growth averaged an annualised 1.2% during the first half of 2026.

Markets have anticipated faster tightening as stronger activity combines with renewed energy inflation. Goldman Sachs instead expects the energy price spike to weaken growth and reduce household disposable income over the coming months.

Jari Stehn, chief Europe economist at Goldman Sachs Research, is “sceptical of current market pricing that the ECB will step up the hiking pace to take rates significantly above 3%,” he wrote in the report.

Core inflation, which excludes volatile energy prices, has remained at 2.4% year on year, matching its level before the war in the Middle East. Longer-term inflation expectations have remained stable.

Those measures support the bank’s distinction between a temporary headline inflation shock and more persistent price pressure. Economic resilience is expected to prompt December’s increase, while weaker household finances and steady underlying inflation should limit the case for further rises.

“We maintain our view that the ECB will normalise rates from late 2027 as the inflation overshoot recedes,” Stehn wrote.

If realised, that path would keep euro-denominated borrowing and deposit rates elevated but produce a lower peak than markets anticipate. Corporate funding, investment and hedging assumptions would still need to accommodate December’s forecast increase and the potential effect of energy prices on demand and cash flows.

Future pricing will depend on how strongly the energy shock passes through to underlying inflation, and whether euro area growth withstands the accompanying pressure on household incomes.

 

UK growth confidence masks sharp regional investment divide

UK businesses are confident about regional growth over the next three years, but their views on public investment reveal a divide between London and several other parts of the country. Lloyds research found 82% expected their regional economy to expand. Confidence was highest in the North East at 90%, followed by the South East at 89% and the North West at 88%.

Expectations of outperforming the UK economy were less evenly distributed. Some 62% of London businesses anticipated their region would outperform over the next 12 months, compared with 28% in the East Midlands and South West.

Scotland followed at 31%, with Wales at 34% and the East of England at 37%. Strong absolute growth expectations therefore did not always translate into confidence about relative performance.

Perceptions of public investment produced an even sharper contrast. While 85% of London firms believed their region received a fair share, the proportion fell to 37% in Yorkshire and the Humber and 38% in Wales. Across the UK, 64% considered their allocation fair.

Companies identified supportive local planning as the leading driver of future regional growth at 37%. Community investment and transport or logistics each attracted 36%, followed by universities, innovation and research at 35% and digital infrastructure at 32%.

Local priorities differed. Planning support reached 48% in the East Midlands, while an equal proportion of West Midlands businesses prioritised community investment. Transport and logistics led in Northern Ireland at 51%, universities, innovation and research reached 44% in Wales and digital infrastructure was selected by 46% in the South East.

Amanda Murphy, chief executive of Lloyds Business and Commercial Banking, said translating confidence into economic activity required public-private coordination.

“Whether it’s investment in infrastructure, skills, innovation or research, businesses have a clear view of what they need locally to drive growth,” she said.

Regional differences in planning, connectivity and access to investment will shape where companies judge expansion to be viable. Lloyds’ findings indicate that national confidence is strongest when businesses assess growth in broad terms, but becomes considerably less uniform when they consider relative performance and the distribution of public funding.

 

BofA extends AI analysis across treasury relationships

Bank of America has introduced two AI-supported analysis capabilities, one giving corporate clients information about their payment activity and the other helping its employees interpret treasury relationships.

Payments Insights will sit within the bank’s CashPro Data Intelligence suite and cover clients’ US accounts. It is intended to analyse payment efficiency, cross-border flows and working-capital performance, using peer comparisons and visualisations to highlight patterns that may require attention.

CashPro handled 213m payments during the first half of 2026, 10% more than a year earlier. Bank of America said analysis of those transactions could help companies review payment methods, currency usage, cross-border activity and working-capital management.

Laura Fox, director of treasury at Allegis Group and a member of the US CashPro Board, said: “The future of treasury isn’t just about having access to more data; it’s about quickly understanding what the data means and how to act on it. Payments Insights helps us see patterns and trends, giving our teams greater visibility to make more informed, strategic decisions.”

Separately, the AskGPS Intelligence Hub will bring together client, account and relationship information for Bank of America’s Global Payments Solutions employees. It builds on an internal generative AI application introduced in 2025 and used by almost 3,000 staff.

Initial capabilities are due to be introduced in phases. Intelligent Treasury Management Reviews will combine client information, relationship activity and account structures. Digital Account Schematics will map accounts, liquidity arrangements, sweeps, multibank relationships and related services.

Enhanced Relationship Insights will apply AI to client, product and activity signals to identify changing requirements and possible service gaps. Bank employees will remain responsible for interpreting the information, making decisions and managing client conversations.

Bank of America said AskGPS operates under its responsible AI framework, including governance, testing and oversight. Information is intended to be traceable, while human judgement remains part of the process.

Together, the releases extend AI analysis to both sides of the bank’s treasury relationships. Corporate users gain a closer view of their payment behaviour, while client-facing employees receive a more consolidated picture of account structures and activity.

 

J.P. Morgan taps Thunes to widen global payment reach

J.P. Morgan Payments is working with Thunes to extend its cross-border reach, connecting corporate clients to local bank accounts and mobile wallets through real-time networks in more than 100 corridors. The arrangement will expand J.P. Morgan’s Xpedite Remit service by combining the bank’s connections to domestic real-time payment rails with the Thunes Direct Global Network. J.P. Morgan said the network would cover 12bn mobile wallets and bank accounts.

Clients can initiate payments through a single account and connection using 24/7 networks. Transfers can be made in the same currency or converted through FX, while the service will provide principal protection and end-to-end payment tracking.

Initial use cases include instant supplier settlements, bill payments and remittances. Availability will be global, with the rollout covering markets that receive substantial cross-border remittance flows, including India, Mexico, Bangladesh, Brazil, China, Colombia, Indonesia, Kenya, Nigeria, Pakistan and the Philippines.

Faster local payouts could give treasury teams greater certainty over when suppliers receive funds, particularly outside banking hours. End-to-end tracking is intended to improve visibility over payment status, supporting investigation and reconciliation when transfers do not arrive as expected.

Chase will use the expanded rails for accounts serving approximately 94m consumers and small businesses. The bank expects them to support faster international payouts and real-time inbound payments into the US.

Expansion through Thunes forms part of J.P. Morgan’s investment in cross-border infrastructure. Other initiatives include Wire 365 and its participation in Swift’s retail payments scheme, both of which are intended to increase the speed and predictability of international transfers.

Access to local bank and wallet payment methods through one connection may reduce the number of separate arrangements required when companies enter markets. Corporate value will depend on the coverage available for each payment route, the handling of FX conversion and the quality of tracking across the complete transaction.

 

IBM adds Swift ledger access and on-premises control

IBM has added beta access to Swift’s blockchain-based shared ledger and an on-premises deployment option for its Digital Asset Haven platform, targeting regulated institutions exploring tokenised deposits and other digital assets.

An ISO 20022 messaging adapter will allow participating institutions to instruct tokenised deposit transactions on Swift’s ledger using established payment messages. Banks can therefore retain familiar message formats and operational processes rather than create separate blockchain-specific workflows.

Swift’s permissioned ledger supports bank-issued tokenised deposits. Participating IBM clients can move digital assets around the clock ahead of final settlement through existing systems, while continuing to apply Swift standards and their own compliance procedures.

Development of the ledger involved more than 40 financial institutions and moved from its 2025 announcement to activation within nine months. Seventeen institutions are involved in the initial tokenised deposit pilots, with participating banks already testing the ledger through Digital Asset Haven.

A separate beta will let clients deploy the IBM platform entirely within their own data centres on IBM Z and LinuxONE infrastructure. No public cloud connection is required, allowing institutions to keep both the application and key-management layers within their own environment.

Security features include hardware protection for cryptographic keys through IBM Crypto Express hardware security modules. Production, testing and development environments can be isolated, while formal key-generation procedures and cold-storage support are intended to provide auditable records for regulators.

IBM said the on-premises version uses the same architecture, application programming interfaces and workflows as its software-as-a-service and hybrid options. Institutions could therefore change deployment models without rewriting their applications.

Combined, the releases give institutions two distinct forms of control: standardised messaging for participation in a shared digital asset network and local control of the technology and keys supporting their operations. Final settlement nevertheless remains within existing systems, preserving a boundary between token movement and established banking infrastructure.

 

Deutsche Bank broadens IPID role in payment decisions

Deutsche Bank plans to deploy IPID’s payment decision intelligence technology across its global payments business, expanding an existing relationship focused on selected fraud-prevention capabilities. The proposed partnership will combine verification, fraud, compliance and payment optimisation signals before transactions are released. Its purpose is to help the bank assess risk, choose payment routes and improve certainty that funds will reach the intended beneficiary.

Faster payment processing leaves financial institutions less time to investigate problems once an instruction has entered the payment chain. Fragmented methods and regulatory requirements also increase the number of factors that must be assessed before execution.

IPID’s technology is designed to bring those signals into a single decision layer. Deutsche Bank expects the wider deployment to support earlier risk identification, more efficient routing and fewer avoidable delays for corporate clients. Further capabilities will be developed jointly.

Rachel Whelan, APAC and MEA head of corporate cash management and global head of payments and transactional FX product management at Deutsche Bank, said: “As global payments volumes continue to grow and move in real-time, having clearer insight before a payment is sent is increasingly important.”

Fewer payment delays could reduce the manual work involved in investigating rejected or misdirected transactions. Better routing and beneficiary certainty could also support more predictable supplier settlement and cash positioning.

Expansion across Deutsche Bank’s global payment business would move IPID’s role beyond individual fraud controls towards a broader assessment of whether, where and how a payment should proceed. Its value will depend on how consistently those signals can be applied across payment types and jurisdictions.

 

Tradeweb upgrades automated pricing for US corporate bonds

Tradeweb has upgraded its automated pricing engine for US investment-grade and high-yield corporate bonds, adding more data inputs, revised machine-learning models and pricing that responds more quickly to intraday market movements.

Ai-Price combines publicly available TRACE information with Tradeweb’s proprietary datasets to generate estimated bid and offer levels. Institutional trading activity, including transactions in European credit, will feed into the model alongside US market data.

Expanded inputs are intended to improve estimates for bonds that may trade less frequently or whose liquidity changes during the day. Tradeweb said the resulting prices should better reflect current market conditions, although they remain model-generated estimates rather than executable quotes.

Users can apply the estimates before trading to assess liquidity and likely execution costs. During execution, they can compare dealer responses and identify potential opportunities, while post-trade uses include transaction-cost analysis, performance measurement and reporting.

Ai-Price also feeds Tradeweb’s Automated Intelligent Execution system. More responsive pricing is intended to reduce the need for manual involvement in automated orders and support the routing of larger transactions through the system, leaving traders to concentrate on more complex trades.

Improved secondary-market price discovery could give corporate issuers clearer information about liquidity and transaction costs across their outstanding debt. Such signals may contribute to assessments of investor demand and market conditions when funding teams consider future issuance.

Current coverage is limited to US investment-grade and high-yield corporate bonds. Tradeweb is working to extend the engine to other fixed-income instruments, including emerging-market debt, alongside potential uses in portfolio analytics and further trading automation.

 

Finastra connects supply chain finance with trade and lending

Finastra has launched a supply chain finance platform that connects payables and receivables programmes with its trade finance and commercial lending applications. Finastra Supply Chain Finance integrates with Trade Innovation and Loan IQ through Nexus APIs, linking supply chain finance with trade products, loans and related risk and exposure data.

Initial capabilities span buyer and supplier acquisition, onboarding, fulfilment, servicing and risk management. Connections to corporate ERP systems and trade ecosystem partners are intended to support straight-through processing from invoice submission through financing and repayment.

Native secondary-market functions allow banks to distribute financed assets, with pricing, limit management and reconciliation included in the workflow. Institutions can also manage limits and exposures across supply chain finance, letters of credit, guarantees and loans within a shared framework.

Risk controls include AI-supported fraud detection, compliance screening and eligibility monitoring. Finastra said the system is designed to handle thousands of counterparties and millions of invoices, using real-time servicing and automated processing to support transaction volumes.

Deployment ranges from on-premises installations to software as a service. A common data layer is intended to support credit decisions and portfolio management while connecting the platform with Finastra applications and external systems.

Later releases are expected to add purchase-order finance, pre-shipment and post-shipment finance, inventory finance and distributor finance. Those additions would extend the platform beyond its initial payables and receivables focus.

Corporate customers will access the capabilities through bank-led programmes rather than directly. Connected onboarding, servicing and risk distribution may help banks support larger programmes and wider supplier bases, with products and timing determined by each institution.