Vive la Révolution: Shaking Up Payments and Cash Management

Driven by technological and regulatory change, the payments landscape is currently a hotbed of innovation. Deborah Mur, Head of Global Liquidity and Cash Management, HSBC France, highlights some of the latest developments – including a recent collaboration between HSBC and PayPal – and explains how corporate treasurers stand to benefit. She also outlines French corporates’ current priorities and highlights how HSBC France can support European organisations in a post-Brexit world.

Eleanor Hill, TMI (EH): There is a great deal of innovation happening in the payments landscape right now. But are there also ‘under the radar’ developments that treasurers might benefit from?

Deborah Mur, HSBC France (DM): This is an extremely exciting time for the payments industry. Developments such as real-time payments and SWIFT’s global payments innovation (gpi) initiative are rightly receiving a lot of attention. The move away from physical cash and cheques towards digital payment methods is also a significant focus, together with the new collaborative ecosystem being created between banks and fintechs.

What lies underneath all of these trends, however, is the drive by banks, market infrastructures, and new entrants, to improve the payments experience – for the payer and the payee. Since the aim is to make the end-to-end payments process as frictionless as possible, this is certainly a trend that treasurers will benefit from going forward. 

EH: Could you give an example of how an improved payments experience might be delivered to treasurers? What is HSBC doing in this space, for instance?

DM: Well, HSBC recently launched a service called Global Disbursements, which went live in June. The solution combines our FX and payments services into one process for cross-border, low-value, mass payments. Historically, these types of payments have involved complex, manual or costly processes – with many companies converting their FX separately. Through Global Disbursements, however, treasurers can make cross-border payments in 130+ currencies from a single operating account with one seamless process. 

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