Closing in on Payments Nirvana

Instant Cross-border Treasury Transactions

While domestic faster payments schemes have seen excellent traction over the past decade, obtaining the same visibility and control of cash flows in the cross-border world has been far more challenging. This is now changing, however, as consumer pressure, regulation, and technology propel the prospect of a real-time cross-border payments ecosystem closer to reality.

The often-dynamic world of payments has delivered a series of new trends in the past five years that are transformative for multinational corporates. As a result, best practices for corporate treasurers around payments and collections have also moved on considerably.

Technology is obviously one of the significant drivers of these changes. Advances in systems and tools have enabled new and more intuitive experiences and inspired the launch of a raft of new platform economies.

Emanuela Saccarola, Global Co-Head Cross-border Payments, Treasury and Trade Solutions (TTS), Citi, comments: “Digital clients are creating platforms where consumers can interact directly, disintermediating some of the traditional participants in the flows. There are newer business models, such as e-commerce, that were already trending upwards and were given a major boost by the pandemic.”

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