In this October–November 2025 edition of the Treasury News Recap series, we spotlight six significant news stories transforming corporate treasury and payments. Leading the lineup is Bottomline’s launch of an embedded AI agent designed to modernise cash management through conversational intelligence and predictive insights. From there, we explore Bank of America’s record adoption of AI-powered CashPro tools, Ripple’s US$1 billion acquisition of GTreasury marking its entry into the corporate treasury arena, Mastercard’s launch of a global threat intelligence solution to combat payment fraud at scale, and the Corpay–Mastercard expansion of near real-time payments to 22 new markets. We conclude with Nacha’s latest data showing double-digit growth in business-to-business (B2B) ACH payments and new cross-border rule updates—together signalling a more connected, automated, and data-driven future for treasury and payments professionals worldwide.

Bottomline introduces embedded AI agent to transform treasury and cash management

Bottomline has unveiled plans to launch an embedded AI agent within its Global Cash Management and Payments Hub solution, marking another step toward intelligent automation in the Office of the CFO. Scheduled for rollout in early 2026, the AI-powered assistant—named Bea—is designed to modernize treasury workflows with conversational AI, predictive insights, and secure automation.

Bea will function as a digital team member for treasury and finance professionals, allowing users to interact with their data through natural language prompts such as “What are my current account balances?”, “What is my forecasted cash position?”, or “Help me approve an intra-company payment.” Instead of relying on traditional dashboards or manual workflows, Bea combines a Large Language Model (LLM) with predictive analytics to provide real-time answers, proactive guidance, and contextual recommendations.

Integrated into Bottomline’s Treasury and Cash Management solution, the AI agent will enhance cash visibility, accelerate approvals, and strengthen forecasting accuracy. Its role-based personalization ensures users see information most relevant to their priorities, while intuitive commands replace complex system navigation.

“Our goal is to embed intelligence into every daily interaction, helping the Office of the CFO operate with greater efficiency and strategic clarity,” said Leonardo Gil, VP of Product for Global Cash Management and Payments Hub at Bottomline. “Bea is more than technology. It’s a trusted team member delivering insights, usability, and simplicity.”

Bottomline emphasized that Bea operates in a closed, secure environment, ensuring client data is never shared with public large language models. This architecture maintains compliance and confidentiality while delivering the benefits of AI-driven automation.

“AI agents like Bea represent the next evolution in enterprise finance, where decisions are data-driven and made in real time,” said Craig Jeffery, Managing Partner, Strategic Treasurer. “Bottomline’s approach to secure, conversational AI is the standard for treasury.”  ⃰ 

The launch underscores the growing adoption of embedded AI across enterprise finance systems. By positioning Bea as an intelligent and trusted digital colleague—rather than a standalone tool—Bottomline aims to reduce friction in treasury workflows, improve decision-making, and help treasury teams unlock greater efficiency and strategic clarity.

BofA (Bank of America) reports record corporate client adoption of AI-powered CashPro tools

Bank of America has reported record adoption of its AI-driven CashPro® Chat and transaction search capabilities, underscoring the growing demand among corporates for real-time insights and automated treasury support.

CashPro, the bank’s digital platform for payments, deposits, loans and trade transactions, is used by thousands of companies worldwide. Corporate client usage of CashPro Chat rose 21% year-over-year, with nearly 70% of corporate clients now using the AI-enabled assistant for account information, transaction tracking, and service resolution. Meanwhile, CashPro Search, launched in early 2023, has surpassed 18 million searches, including nearly 2.4 million in Q3 2025 — its highest quarterly total to date.

“Clients expect instant access to information – without the delays of email or phone calls,” said Abbey Novack, Managing Director, CashPro Service Product Executive at Bank of America. “Our self-service and AI-powered tools deliver that immediacy, helping clients make faster, smarter decisions.”

CashPro Chat combines 24/7 automated support with intelligent routing to live experts available 24 hours a day, five days a week. The bank reported average response times under 30 seconds and a 43% containment rate in the latest quarter — a measure of how often inquiries are resolved without escalation. The most frequent topics include payment processing, transaction status, authentication, and access management.

CashPro Search gives treasurers real-time visibility across payment types — including wires, ACH, RTP, FX, and loan proceeds — and helps validate payment statuses while routing inquiries directly to service teams. Among early adopters, the feature has reduced phone and email inquiries by 20%, freeing treasury teams to focus on higher-value activities.

BofA said upcoming enhancements will extend CashPro Chat’s functionality to include credit inquiries and additional automated treasury workflows, further streamlining client engagement. The developments reflect the bank’s broader strategy to embed artificial intelligence across treasury management — improving operational efficiency, speed, and client experience.

Ripple enters corporate treasury market with US$1billion GTreasury acquisition

Ripple has announced the US$1 billion acquisition of GTreasury, a global leader in treasury management systems, marking its formal entry into the corporate treasury space and further expanding its presence in enterprise payments and digital asset infrastructure.

The deal, unveiled in October, provides Ripple with access to GTreasury’s extensive multinational client base and four decades of treasury expertise in cash, liquidity, and risk management. The acquisition positions Ripple to offer CFOs and treasurers a unified platform to manage both traditional and digital assets—including stablecoins, tokenised deposits, and other emerging instruments at scale.

“For too long, money has been stuck in slow, outdated payments systems and infrastructure, causing unnecessary delays, high costs, and roadblocks to entering new markets — problems that blockchain technologies are ideally suited to solve,” said Brad Garlinghouse, CEO of Ripple. “Ripple’s and GTreasury’s capabilities together bring the best of both worlds, so treasury and finance teams can finally put their trapped capital to work, process payments instantly, and open up new growth opportunities.”

Renaat Ver Eecke, CEO of GTreasury, described the deal as “a watershed moment for treasury management,” adding that joining Ripple would “accelerate our vision from managing capital to activating it.”

GTreasury’s platform—known for its risk management and FX solutions, as well as its compliance and audit frameworks—meets the highest global regulatory standards. Its established reputation in corporate treasury technology aligns seamlessly with Ripple’s expanding role in cross-border payments and digital asset infrastructure.

Once complete, Ripple said the integration with GTreasury will enable corporates to earn yield on short-term assets through repo markets, execute real-time cross-border payments, and manage liquidity more effectively across multiple currencies and asset classes.

Mastercard unveils global threat intelligence solution to combat payment fraud at scale

Mastercard has launched Mastercard Threat Intelligence, a first-of-its-kind solution that applies threat intelligence to payments at scale. The platform combines Mastercard’s extensive network visibility and fraud insights with Recorded Future’s curated cyber threat intelligence, enabling payment fraud and merchant compliance teams at issuing and acquiring banks to detect and prevent cyber-enabled fraud before it reaches the transaction stage.

Fraud is increasingly rooted in cyberattacks rather than at the point of transaction. Mastercard cited research showing that 60% of global fraud leaders are only alerted to cyber incidents once losses have already occurred. The new platform seeks to change that by bridging the gap between cybersecurity and fraud prevention, allowing fraud, compliance, and security teams to collaborate using the same intelligence feed.

The Mastercard Threat Intelligence solution delivers real-time alerts on card-testing activity and provides quantitative data to identify and disrupt digital skimming and card-related malware. It also offers merchant-specific risk assessments, weekly payment ecosystem threat reports, and actionable case studies on emerging fraud trends. By integrating Mastercard’s payments data with Recorded Future’s analytics, the platform gives banks, acquirers, and payment service providers a consolidated view of potential threats, helping them act before losses occur.

According to Mastercard, early testing of the Threat Intelligence platform has already produced measurable results. Working with its ecosystem partners, Mastercard identified and dismantled malicious domains responsible for stealing payment card data from nearly 9,500 e-commerce sites, linked to an estimated US$120 million in fraud.

Corpay and Mastercard extend near real-time cross-border payments to 22 new markets

Corpay and Mastercard have expanded their long-standing collaboration to enable near real-time cross-border payments in 22 new markets across Asia, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America. The announcement, made at the Sibos 2025 conference in Frankfurt, marks the latest milestone in a partnership spanning more than a decade.

The initiative leverages Mastercard Move’s global money movement infrastructure to deliver faster, more secure, and transparent payments for corporates, small businesses, and financial institutions. With global cross-border payment volumes projected to surpass US$250 trillion by 2027, as per Bank of England estimates, the expansion aims to empower businesses and financial institutions to meet the growing demand for speed, efficiency, and visibility in international transactions.

The collaboration expands access to Mastercard Move, which connects to over 200 countries and territories, supports more than 150 currencies, and reaches 95% of the world’s banked population. By broadening their joint reach, Corpay and Mastercard aim to simplify international transfers while ensuring end-to-end transparency, fee clarity, and compliance across multiple payment channels — including bank accounts, cards, digital and mobile wallets, and cash.

The collaboration announcement follows the April 2025 agreement naming Corpay as Mastercard’s exclusive provider of large-ticket cross-border payment solutions and currency risk management services for financial institution clients. That earlier partnership also expanded access for Corpay’s small and mid-sized business customers to Mastercard Move’s disbursement and remittance service.

Together, the two companies are accelerating the modernization of cross-border payments — offering enhanced speed, security, and scalability to support global business growth.

Nacha reports 10% rise in B2B ACH payments as cross-border rules advance

Nacha has reported another strong quarter for business-to-business (B2B) payments on the ACH Network, as organizations continue to migrate from cheques to digital payments. In the third quarter of 2025, B2B volume rose 10% year over year to nearly 2.1 billion payments, valued at US$16 trillion, representing 69% of total ACH Network payments value for the quarter.

Among these, $585 billion in payments were made via Same Day ACH, up 15% from the same period in 2024, highlighting sustained demand for faster settlement. Overall, ACH Network volume reached 8.8 billion payments worth US$23.2 trillion, increases of 5.2% and 8.2% respectively. September saw a record 120 million Same Day ACH payments — the highest monthly total of 2025 and more than 20% higher than a year earlier.

“The switch by businesses from checks to ACH is being made for good reasons,” said Jane Larimer, President and CEO of Nacha. “ACH is safer than a check in the mail, and it’s also faster, whether using Same Day ACH or standard.”

The continued growth in ACH adoption aligns with findings from the Association for Financial Professionals® (AFP) 2025 Digital Payments Survey Report, which showed cheque usage in B2B payments falling from 81% in 2004 to just 26% in 2025. Nacha attributes this transition to ACH’s combination of speed, security, and reliability, increasingly preferred by corporates seeking to streamline payment operations.

In parallel, Nacha members have approved a series of rule updates to enhance International ACH Transactions (IATs), aimed at improving efficiency, data quality, and compliance for cross-border payments. The new framework revises the definition of an IAT to clarify when a transaction qualifies as cross-border and introduces additional data fields — including date of birth for sanctions screening — along with a distinct return code for sanctions-related issues.

The updates also recognise the role of non-traditional financial institutions, such as payment service providers, as offshore counterparts in IATs. US institutions will now be required to register IAT-specific contacts in the ACH Contact Registry to support compliance and transparency.

That wraps up our October–November 2025 Treasury News Recap. From embedded AI agents and intelligent cash management to blockchain-enabled treasury solutions, real-time cross-border payments, and the continued evolution of ACH and fraud intelligence frameworks, these developments show a treasury landscape in rapid transformation. Across innovation, security, and regulation, technology is redefining how treasury teams manage liquidity, risk, and operational efficiency on a global scale.

Stay informed and inspired by reading more in-depth articles, industry roundups, and interviews on CTMfile, and join the conversation on the OpenTreasury Podcast, where industry leaders share practical perspectives and forward-looking ideas shaping the next era of treasury and payments.

 

 ⃰ Disclosure: Strategic Treasurer owns CTMfile.