When Treasury Meets Digital Assets

A Strategic Turning Point for Liquidity

As digital assets mature, treasurers are reassessing their relevance beyond experimentation. Societe Generale’s Geneviève Douhet, Director of Digital Assets Programs, Global Transaction Banking, and Floor Meeuwis, Director of Liquidity and Virtual Account Management Advisory, Global Transaction Banking, join Stéphanie Cabossioras, Chief Strategy & Global Policy Officer, Societe Generale-FORGE (SG-FORGE), in examining what digital money can realistically deliver for treasury, and why regulated, bank issued stablecoins may represent a tangible solution.

SG-FORGE issuance of Europe’s first regulated euro and US dollar stablecoins marks an important milestone for corporate treasury. The EUR CoinVertible (EURCV) and USD CoinVertible (USDCV) are fully integrated into the banking ecosystem. As digital assets move beyond experimentation, treasurers are now asking a fundamental question: do digital assets address concrete treasury pain points, or do they add complexity without solving structural issues?

The expanding digital money market

Digital assets have reached a scale that treasurers can no longer ignore. Global digital asset markets now exceed $2.5tr., with stablecoins alone representing more than $300bn historically driven by trading but increasingly used for payments and settlement.

This acceleration is no coincidence. Regulatory clarity, notably Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) in Europe and evolving frameworks such as the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins (GENIUS) Act, is enabling institutional-grade adoption. At the same time, payment expectations are shifting: global, instant, and always-on value transfer is becoming the new benchmark.

What digital money enables
Digital money brings capabilities that traditional infrastructures struggle to offer natively:

• 24/7 real-time value transfer, beyond banking cut-off times.
• Faster and cheaper settlement, with fewer intermediaries.
• Programmability, enabling automated and conditional payments.
• Global reach, supporting cross border and ecosystem driven business models.

A structural shift is underway. Digital assets such as stablecoins, once mainly used as invisible settlement layers between two fiat currencies, the so called stablecoin sandwich, are now evolving into fully fledged treasury instruments.

Real-time treasury: a growing imperative for corporates
Many corporates still operate in batch-based environments, managing end-of-day liquidity positions. The concept of real-time treasury may therefore appear premature. Yet expectations are changing.

Real-time treasury does not mean abandoning control. It means moving from forecast-based liquidity management to flow-based optimisation, characterised by:

• Continuous cash visibility, both on and off chain.
• Immediate funding and settlement, with intraday optimisation.
• Reduced liquidity buffers and trapped cash.

As payment ecosystems become more global and digital, treasurers increasingly need liquidity at the right time, in the right place – instantly.

A deep dive into digital assets in the treasury landscape

Treasurers today face an expanding range of digital money options, increasing both choice and complexity:

Private digital money

• Volatile cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin (BTC) and ether (ETH), the native cryptocurrency of the Ethereum blockchain, are generally unsuitable for treasury liquidity, but relevant for specific digital economy use cases.
• Stablecoins, backed by fiat or high-quality assets, issued by banks or non-banks, regulated or not.
• Tokenised deposits, issued against commercial bank liabilities, evolving from closed loop models to multi-bank instruments;
• Tokenised money market fund (MMFs) enabling regulated yield generation on chain.

Public digital money

• CBDCs, retail or wholesale, still emerging but strategically important.

However, integrating digital assets into treasury operations comes with a set of challenges.

From promise to execution: the challenges to tackle

Operational disruption driven by real-time operations
While digital assets enable near real-time liquidity, they also reshape treasury operating models. Traditionally organised around batch-based processes and daily cut-off times, treasurers now face almost continuous liquidity movements, requiring new monitoring tools, revised workflows and extended operational coverage. Beyond the implications for treasury’s interaction with banks, this transformation also affects internal treasury organisation, as ERP systems and AP/AR processes need to move toward real-time operation.

A gap between financial speed and physical business cycles
Real-time treasury does not automatically translate into real-time business operations. Many industries remain anchored to physical logistics cycles, production, shipping and delivery still take time, limiting the immediate monetisation of real-time liquidity.

Stronger control, risk and compliance requirements
Near instant settlement heightens the need for robust controls. As with instant payment infrastructures, digital assets require upgraded fraud prevention mechanisms, as well as careful management of FX exposure, counterparty risk and cross jurisdictional compliance, reinforcing the importance of regulated custody and compliant on and off ramp solutions.

Accounting, reporting and integration constraints
Digital assets only deliver value when fully integrated into existing treasury ecosystems. Accounting treatment must be clearly defined, while ERP and TMS readiness remains uneven. Without seamless integration, treasurers lack end-to-end visibility across on-chain and off-chain environments.

In summary, corporate adoption is shaped by three overarching challenges:

• Fragmentation across blockchains, requiring interoperability with legacy systems.
• Reliable on- and off-ramp capabilities to ensure last-mile liquidity.
• Re-emergence of frictions when returning to fiat, notably tax, accounting and regulatory considerations.

What sets apart Europe’s first bank issued regulated stablecoins
This is where regulated, bank-issued stablecoins, such as those issued by SG-FORGE, change the equation. With the MiCA-compliant stablecoins EUR CoinVertible and USD CoinVertible, SG-FORGE provides corporates with digital assets that are fully integrated into the banking ecosystem.

These instruments effectively act as pre-funded on-chain nostro accounts, offering:

• Instant settlement
• Programmability
• 24/7 availability
• Real time liquidity when needed

From a competitive advantage perspective, corporates do not adopt technology for novelty. They adopt it when it solves operational issues, frees up liquidity and reduces friction, enabling teams to focus on higher-value activities. This is precisely where regulated stablecoins deliver tangible value.

Practical corporate use cases
Stablecoins behave like cash on chain, enabling several treasury use cases:

• Cross border payments outside banking hours across complex corridors.
• Intra-group liquidity management, including real-time sweeping and cross-currency pooling.
• Third-party instant settlement, subject to counterparty acceptance.
• Yield generation, via tokenised MMFs or selected decentralised finance (DeFi) protocols.

From a liquidity perspective, treasurers expect lower intraday buffers, dynamic cash allocation and enhanced transparency. Treasury is shifting from discrete cycles to continuous optimisation.

What comes next for digital liquidity?

Digital assets are unlikely to fully replace traditional payment rails. Instead, treasurers should expect a hybrid model, combining traditional and tokenised infrastructures.

Promising developments include:

• Programmable and agent-based payments, automating treasury processes.
• Expansion into trade finance, collateral management, and tokenised real-world assets.
• A growing role for major payment players acting as gateways between systems.

Treasury managers should start preparing now by updating policies, frameworks and risk assessments. Digital money is no longer theoretical. It is already reshaping liquidity management, settlement efficiency and cash visibility.

Yet this transformation comes with challenges: fragmentation, regulatory diversity, operational change, and integration complexity. For corporates, the priority is clear: engage early,  define a strategy, and choose regulated partners. Treasury must evolve in the same way as the technology does.