More than three-quarters of large businesses have broadened their settlement currency exposure as changing trade routes force treasury teams to support new markets, banking relationships and payment methods. The DBS report The Great Rewiring: Money in a New Order found that 23% of respondents were already using multiple currencies beyond traditional reserve currencies. Another 55% had selective exposure to several currencies for particular corridors or markets. Only 2% had given no consideration to alternatives.

Pressure to diversify reaches well beyond currency choice. Some 77% said changing trade routes and shipping patterns had required treasury operations to adapt, while 76% faced greater pressure to expand into emerging markets. Another 77% reported greater counterparty and sanctions risk. Energy price volatility was disrupting cash forecasting for 73%, and the same proportion had encountered higher FX volatility and less predictable settlement outcomes.

DBS commissioned EY to survey 422 CFOs, finance heads and senior treasury executives at organisations with annual revenue above $500 million across 11 markets. Just over half of the respondents were CFOs and 64% worked for businesses with global operations, so the findings lean heavily towards multinational experience.

Sector coverage was led by technology at 18% and energy at 17%. Automotive companies accounted for 15% and industrials 10%. A third of the sample had annual revenue above $5 billion, while 52% sat between $500 million and $2 billion. The mix places complex international cash and trade flows near the centre of the research.

Every new market widens treasury’s remit. At the same time, volatility makes each corridor harder to manage. That tension runs through the report: businesses want more choices over where and how they settle, yet the resulting structures are making cash harder to forecast, locate and mobilise.

Trade corridors redraw treasury’s map

Southeast Asia led the list of intended expansion destinations, selected by 65% of respondents. Australia and New Zealand came next at 50%. India attracted 45%, the Middle East 42% and Latin America 34%. Much of the next phase of corporate expansion is therefore aimed at markets where banking structures, currencies and regulation can differ considerably from a company’s established model.

Among Hong Kong respondents, 80% reported greater pressure to enter new markets as their organisations sought to spread geographic risk. Across the full sample, the report ranked pressure to leave or deprioritise existing markets ahead of expansion and the need to adapt operations to changing corridors. Businesses are adding markets and dropping others.

Local market entry brings new currency and banking requirements. Treasury may need a fresh collection route and additional funding before sales volumes are material. New hedges may be required too. The report argues for assessing liquidity, payment and FX needs corridor by corridor instead of assuming one regional structure can support every flow.

Volatility also affects how those routes work in practice. Some 35% said currency volatility and diversification had a significant influence on their choice of settlement currency, with another 50% reporting a moderate influence. Payment method was affected almost as widely: 32% reported a significant influence and 55% a moderate one.

Explaining how this had changed SF Group’s approach, head of payments Sylvia Yau said: “We previously relied on dominant global currencies, but are now building a diversified, multi-currency settlement framework centred on local currencies, particularly across emerging trade corridors such as Vietnam and other ASEAN markets.”

Choosing local currencies can remove an FX conversion. It may also accommodate suppliers that prefer domestic payment or provide another route when a global currency or correspondent channel becomes difficult to access. But it adds balances, exposures and banking connections that treasury must monitor.

Currency choice becomes corridor-specific

Most companies are adding currencies selectively. The largest group, at 55%, held exposure for particular markets or corridors, suggesting that policy is increasingly being set around commercial flows, counterparty needs and local liquidity.

Another 15% were exploring alternative settlement currencies and 5% were monitoring developments without current exposure. So more companies could add currencies as trade routes change. Over the next 18 months, 47% also expected a moderate or significant increase in token-based or blockchain-enabled settlement. Some 21% expected greater use of other non-bank payment mechanisms.

Reserve currencies still anchor many flows. The survey instead describes a layered model in which local or alternative currencies are added where trade economics, sanctions exposure or settlement access justify them. That approach can limit unnecessary conversion. It also requires clear rules on which entity holds each currency and how surplus balances are returned or redeployed.

Counterparty and sanctions risk is another reason to keep options open. Lijing Jiang, CFO of Hangzhou CIEC Group, said: “Sanctions risks are one of our biggest concerns… and the company has an internal leadership group to monitor compliance with sanctions.” Alternative settlement routes can offer continuity. But every extra currency, bank and payment mechanism brings its own controls and compliance work.

Treasury policies are becoming more granular as a result. In practice, one corridor may need its own funding arrangements and settlement timetable. It may also need different hedges and banking partners. The report sees a single global model giving way to corridor-level decisions, although businesses still need consolidated oversight above those local structures.

RMB demand follows commercial flows

RMB shows what this looks like in practice. Current use reached 81% among respondents in both Hong Kong and Taiwan, 80% in South Korea, 68% in Indonesia and 67% in Singapore. Geographic proximity helps, but the figures also follow the depth of trade and investment links with China.

Adoption was less advanced elsewhere, though interest was often substantial. In India, 44% used RMB and another 44% were considering it within one or two years. Current use stood at 48% in Germany and 43% in the US, with a further 37% and 33% respectively considering adoption.

Future intent was furthest ahead of current use in the UK and Australia. Only 18% of respondents in each market currently used RMB, while 51% in the UK and 54% in Australia were considering it. If those plans translate into use, the currency will spread further beyond the Asian markets where corporate settlement is already established.

Commercial activity remained the main reason. Some 55% linked adoption to transactions with Chinese counterparties, while 50% cited strategic investment or closer financial integration with China. Access to RMB liquidity and hedging solutions mattered to 48%.

A further 45% cited access to preferred financial-market instruments. Geoeconomic hedging influenced 44%, and 42% pointed to the currency’s treasury yield.

Manulife Financial Asia’s senior director for Asia treasury, Billy Law, said: “Our RMB exposure primarily reflects the scale of our China joint venture operations and our sizeable client base in the Hong Kong SAR market, with the currency playing an important role in claims and vendor payments, intercompany settlements and investment activities.”

The report also said recent RMB appreciation had encouraged Chinese exporters to offer better commercial terms when contracts were redenominated. That makes settlement currency part of the supplier negotiation, alongside price and payment terms. The buyer still has to assess liquidity, hedging cost and convertibility in its own markets.

More currencies expose the visibility gap

Currency diversification carried a clear operational cost. Some 57% said it increased the complexity of cash forecasting, while 56% reported limited real-time visibility into payments and cash positions. More than half, 55%, were relying on multiple intermediaries or correspondent banks. Another 51% faced longer or less predictable settlement timelines.

Limited visibility was even more pronounced in Hong Kong, where 67% identified it as the leading challenge associated with currency diversification. Across the global sample, 46% linked diversification to more manual reconciliation and exception management.

Separate questions about unresolved treasury problems produced a similar result. Maintaining consistent oversight across payments, cash and exposures led at 54%. Payment delays, routing friction and dependence on intermediaries followed at 50%. Some 46% cited risks created by expansion across markets, while continued manual intervention remained a problem for 40%.

Wenbai Zhu, CFO of Chery Indonesia, summarised the priorities from a corporate perspective: “From a treasury standpoint, ensuring liquidity, maintaining visibility across cash positions, managing FX exposure, and preserving funding flexibility have become critical priorities.”

These pressures reach the balance sheet quickly. Additional currencies can scatter liquidity across accounts, leaving funds sitting in places where they can’t immediately meet obligations elsewhere. Uncertain settlement times weaken short-term forecasts. More intermediaries also create extra points at which payments can stall or require investigation.

Payment speed and cash availability are separate questions. A transaction can move quickly and still arrive with poor status data or require manual repair. Where settlement times vary, cash may appear in a forecast before treasury can use it. Companies then need larger buffers or contingency funding, especially when obligations fall across several currencies.

Manual work compounds the problem. Some 71% of all respondents reported more workarounds and exception handling as fragmented systems and payment-processing problems diverted capacity from other tasks. But faster payment rails don’t solve the control problem if treasury can’t reconcile the movement or see the resulting balance promptly.

AI targets the operational backlog

AI drew most interest where it could address those everyday weaknesses. For payment investigations and post-settlement issue resolution, 26% were already experiencing benefits and 50% expected them within two years. Cash and liquidity forecasting had delivered gains for 33%, with another 43% expecting improvement.

Reconciliation was another prominent use case. Some 34% had already seen better reconciliation and exception detection, while 41% expected benefits within two years. Information retrieval and human-triggered task automation were among the applications in use, as were embedded analytics. Fully autonomous agentic workflows sat further along the development path.

Future expectations exceeded benefits already experienced across all three measured uses. That gap puts the quality and timeliness of the underlying information at the heart of delivery. AI can’t produce a dependable liquidity forecast from missing balances, inconsistent transaction data or exposures that sit outside connected systems.

Implementation barriers included regulation and compliance uncertainty. Data security and operational risk were also concerns. The report identified shortages of internal expertise, dependence on bank or partner readiness and difficulty integrating new tools with existing systems. Uncertainty over maturity and return on investment added to the hesitation.

Digital money forms another part of the toolkit, although its adoption figures cover a wide range of maturity. Some 24% had deployed tokenised money at scale and 43% reported limited live use. A further 21% remained at pilot or proof-of-concept stage. As with AI, businesses still have to connect the new tool to existing cash, risk and control processes.

Banks face a wider integration brief

Banks were asked to do more than provide accounts and process transactions. For tokenised money, 64% of respondents wanted a bank to act as the single point of integration into the wider ecosystem. Some 63% sought help with pilots, proofs of concept and integration, while 55% requested education and advice.

On AI, 63% wanted access to bank-enabled technology infrastructure and platforms. Support for pilots or proofs of concept attracted 55%. Meanwhile, 52% wanted transaction data in an AI-ready, structured format. That last request is especially relevant to treasury teams whose current forecasting and reconciliation problems begin with fragmented or late information.

Hugh Wu, corporate treasurer and vice-president at Lenovo Group, said: “Banks can play a pivotal role in accelerating AI adoption through real-time, standardised data connectivity.” His wider comments in the report also called for predictive analytics, payment and FX automation, fraud controls and technical support.

The survey highlights that large companies don’t expect to assemble every new currency, rail and technology connection alone. They want an integration point that can combine access with compliance and usable data.

Companies are adding currencies and entering markets faster than many treasury functions are gaining visibility over the resulting cash. The extra choice only works if treasury can see the money, fund it and hedge it, then move it without multiplying manual work.