Payments at APAC Speed

Asia Pacific is redefining cross-border and real-time payments. While market volatility persists, data is becoming more actionable as treasurers prepare for faster decisions, sharper liquidity strategy and another year of intense regional momentum.

Modern cross-border payments move fastest and evolve first in Asia Pacific. Treasurers operating across the region face a constant churn of innovation to assess, along with a steady rotation of macro headlines, geopolitical shifts, and new technologies.

Real-time payment infrastructure is also now deeply embedded across key Asian markets, with consumer platforms in particular acting as early proof of concept. According to the 2024 Prime Time for Real-Time report from ACI Worldwide ^[1] , Asia Pacific is the largest real-time payments region globally, accounting for the bulk of real-time transaction volume, with 185.8 billion transactions recorded in 2023 and four of the top five markets by volume.

The foundation for corporate usage is building fast. As bilateral linkages expand and clearing systems begin to harmonise, the opportunity for true cross-border corporate real-time connectivity becomes more tangible.

Winnie Chen, Head of Global Payment Solutions, Asia Pacific, Bank of America, outlines: “Asia really is leading the way in terms of cross-border payments and also real-time payments, and that means corporate treasurers are very busy.”

The scale and frequency of industry initiatives reflect a long-running push for more transparent cross-border payment flows, and faster and more certain delivery. Central banks, industry associations, and global infrastructure providers such as Swift have launched parallel projects, each seeking to remove friction from cross-border settlement.

There are clear reasons behind the momentum. Asia Pacific is managing the aftershocks of extended supply chain reconfiguration, evolving US tariffs, and longer-term deglobalisation trends. The region has absorbed a growing volume of reshored manufacturing, multiplying the number of suppliers, markets and trade relationships that corporates must manage.

For treasury teams, the implications are significant. Multiple locations and currencies, combined with more fragmented regulatory oversight, requires stronger liquidity discipline and a faster, data-driven approach to cash visibility. As Chen puts it: “In Asia Pacific, there’s no one uniform system. There are multiple nations, and the biggest friction comes from these varied regulatory environments.”

Yet even amid this fragmentation, the region is stitching together new forms of connectivity that bring corporate usage a step closer.

Next-generation connectivity

The most active testing ground for seamless cross-border connectivity has emerged in Southeast Asia. Singapore’s PayNow and Thailand’s PromptPay became one of the earliest bilateral real-time payment linkages in 2021, primarily focused on consumer flows. The underlying rails, however, now form an essential technical bridge that can evolve and expand into corporate payment scenarios over time. Other pairings are being explored across the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), including connections into India.

India’s Unified Payments Interface (UPI) remains the global benchmark for real-time payment adoption. Its growth reflects not only population scale but also the strong digital adoption curve within local commerce. For multinational treasurers, the appeal is clear: instant domestic settlement, high user uptake, clean data elements, and the potential for bilateral cross-border extension.

“The one that is really fast growing from a volume point of view is India’s UPI,” Chen affirms. “Naturally, because of India’s high population and digital adoption, it is driving very aggressive growth.”

With bilateral linkages strengthening, corporate requirements are becoming more achievable. Treasurers already see benefits including instant collections in local markets and faster settlement cycles across their supply chain ecosystems. Corporate real-time cross-border flows still face hurdles, including regulatory reporting and currency controls, but the direction of travel is unmistakable.

Chen believes corporates will benefit step by step. “These initiatives start as consumer-driven activities, but at the right time, they will evolve into the corporate side of the payment, since that bridge has already been built,” she says. Once governance frameworks and risk controls are aligned, cross-border real-time payments could significantly reduce reconciliation time and strengthen working capital cycles.

For now, however, the day-to-day reality for corporates remains shaped by regulation, currency controls and uneven levels of market readiness.

The friction factor

Liquidity and settlement speed often collide with a long list of regulatory conditions. Treasurers must navigate multiple clearing systems, different reporting standards, and uneven capital controls. A single outbound payment can trigger several rounds of regulatory interpretation, with documentary expectations varying by jurisdiction. While domestic real-time payment infrastructure is maturing rapidly, outbound fund movements can still be constrained in regulated markets.

“Every country and clearing system requires different sorts of data,” Chen says. Restrictions on capital outflows remain common. Payments are often easier to receive than to remit, and treasurers may need to manage trapped cash when local regulations limit cross-border movement. From a corporate perspective, this remains one of the largest structural frictions when sending payments between markets in Asia.

The industry’s broader move towards richer payment data helps, but harmonisation takes time. Standardised identifiers, cleaner invoice metadata, and improved interoperability across formats can reduce manual checks and regulatory clarifications. For now, however, processes remain largely jurisdiction specific, and corporates require local expertise or specialist partners to optimise flow design.

Making cash work harder

Operational friction is now colliding with broader financial pressures that have pushed liquidity management back to the top of the treasurer’s agenda. The volatility of the past several years has only sharpened that focus for treasurers. Rising interest rate cycles, wider FX swings and revenue uncertainty have exposed weaknesses in working-capital structures and reduced tolerance for idle balances. Treasurers want stronger visibility across locations, faster ability to sweep or pool within permitted structures and more proactive insight into their cash position.

Corporates now expect a clear sight of funds across all their entities, along with a forward view of how cash positions will evolve. Yet achieving that level of precision can be difficult when balances are held in different markets, systems, or currencies. Bank of America delivers this through CashPro, its online banking platform, which serves as the primary point of interaction for corporate clients across the region.

“Through CashPro, we provide higher visibility when clients have multiple accounts in multiple locations,” Chen explains. “We provide the forecasting for them every day based on their history, payment patterns, and the payables and receivables cycle.”

Liquidity is also closely tied to FX exposure, particularly for corporates operating across ASEAN that manage a mix of restricted or thinly traded currencies alongside a home-market base such as the US dollar. Locking in future FX rates for a defined window can help reduce planning uncertainty and stabilise working-capital assumptions. Bank of America also provides guaranteed FX rates for up to one year, enabling treasurers to secure protection that best matches their exposure, particularly in more volatile markets.

“Corporates like this service for currencies with high volatility,” Chen reveals. Some treasurers opt for shorter tenors to align with their hedging policy or budget cycles, while others prefer longer windows with more structural exposure. This flexibility now shapes how treasurers plan liquidity and manage risk.

Asia’s new trade map

For many corporates, these financial dynamics coincide with bigger changes in supply chains and production footprints across Asia, where the acceleration of intra-Asian trade is reshaping treasury structures.

As global corporates shift production capacity from China to Southeast Asia under ‘China plus one’ or ‘China plus two’ strategies, capital flows, procurement channels, and corporate structures have diversified. Host markets across the region have begun attracting regional treasury activity and shared services operations, complementing established centres such as Singapore.

“We have seen some corporates starting to build their regional treasury centres in Thailand, not just in Singapore,” Chen notes. The Philippines remains a popular shared service hub, while Malaysia’s Penang and Kuala Lumpur are growing their corporate processing footprint. These developments underline Southeast Asia’s growing pull as supply chains realign and investment follows.

The presence of many smaller domestic suppliers adds another layer of financial pressure. Traditional SCF structures can deliver attractive benefits for anchor buyers, but onboarding smaller vendors becomes slower when lengthy KYC processes are required. Bank of America has prioritised corporate payment undertaking (CPU) models to improve speed and cash flow access.

“CPU is a vital focus for us,” Chen explains. “This is where we use the buyer’s credit as an indemnity to discount the receivables and provide the payment first, without engaging in a lengthy KYC onboarding process for the smaller vendors.”

These CPU structures permit suppliers to discount receivables based on the buyer’s credit indemnity, enabling banks to release funds without performing full KYC onboarding on every small vendor. “This has been very well received by our corporate clients,” Chen enthuses.

By shortening supplier onboarding and improving payment certainty, corporates can stabilise their supply chain partners and support more flexible production cycles. The model also helps smaller vendors access liquidity at lower cost, strengthening the broader ecosystem around the anchor buyer.

These shifts are unfolding within a wider landscape of rapid change, where treasurers are being approached with an expanding mix of technologies, payment rails, and risk-management tools.

Holistic treasury support in a noisy market

As more providers enter the payments and liquidity space, and as claims around cross-border rails, tokenisation, and embedded treasury multiply, treasurers need a clear view of what will genuinely make a difference for their organisations. The pace of innovation is high, but the strategic goal remains the same: faster collection, better payment optimisation, stronger insight, and improved risk control.

Chen believes corporate treasurers must be selective. “They will be approached by a range of financial service providers offering various payment rails and technologies,” she says. “They need to filter through all that noise.” The most compelling use cases are those that improve the client experience, protect margins or accelerate top-line growth.

Bank of America positions advisory, research and transaction services under a unified approach. “We team up with our research team, our Global Markets team and our corporate bankers,” Chen reveals. “We share many economic forecasts with our clients, such as how many rate cuts are potentially coming up and how geopolitical shifts may impact global trade.”

Liquidity optimisation, FX risk, and payment strategy are increasingly interlinked, making integrated dialogue far more powerful than siloed conversations. The same principle applies to corporates: treasurers with close links to finance, procurement, and commercial teams are better placed to build a comprehensive view of exposure and opportunity.

That interconnected approach becomes even more critical as working capital priorities now shape broader trade design decisions. Treasury considerations influence sourcing shifts, centre-of-excellence location, procurement digitisation, and credit risk appetite. All of this depends on connected, trustworthy data, however, which can prove challenging.

The data imperative

Even as ISO-formatted domestic systems bring richer payment data to the surface, a familiar challenge persists. Some corporates still struggle to pinpoint the right information, ensure its integrity and use it at the moment of decision. ERP systems can be powerful, but data often resides across different domains, owned by separate business units, and is inconsistently structured.

“For companies without a huge budget to build insights or AI within their own systems, we can help,” Chen says. “If clients consolidate their banking statements with us, we can use machine learning and AI tools to give them a more holistic analysis of payment cycles, deposits or borrowing decisions.”

The quality of decision-making improves when forecasting aligns with the cadence of regional volatility. Treasurers weighing up borrowing, hedging, or idle-cash deployment need confidence in the accuracy of their underlying data, not simply a broader set of variables. “Without the right data, treasurers are not going to have the optimum analysis to help make the best decisions,” notes Chen.

What comes next

Asia Pacific enters 2026 with real momentum. Real-time connectivity is expanding, liquidity innovation is deepening, intra-Asian supply chains are becoming more active, and treasurers are placing greater emphasis on actionable data. Volatility is likely to persist, but treasurers operating in the region are increasingly equipped with faster settlement, stronger analytics, and more integrated advisory services.

Strategic success now depends on filtering noise, prioritising the most practical improvements, and linking liquidity, FX, and payment strategies into a coherent treasury blueprint. The direction of travel is clearer by the month. As regulatory frameworks converge and data become more usable, cross-border working capital performance will steadily strengthen. Corporate treasurers across APAC are preparing for another year of rapid change, real-time experimentation, and meaningful opportunities.

“With so many options in front of them, treasurers need to focus on what will genuinely strengthen their operations and support business growth,” Chen concludes.