Bank Earnings Spotlight Treasury Innovation as a Growth Engine

Cash management is king in an uncertain world.

For treasury management and services providers, big banks and small firms, business is booming.

Bank earnings reports show strong performance in treasury and payments divisions, with bulge bracket firms like Citi, Bank of America, JPMorgan and more all reporting robust growth across their business lines.

Citi’s treasury and trade services business was up 7% for the third quarter, Bank of America’s treasury service charges increased 12% year over year, and JPMorgan saw its payments business revenue grow 13% from the same quarter last year.

Even smaller lenders like Regions Bank have introduced new treasury management services this quarter.

What’s driving the ongoing shift in corporate finance? First, treasurers are under intensifying pressure, not merely to keep the lights on, but to furnish business units with real-time insight, liquidity flexibility and working capital precision. Solutions like real-time cash positioning, predictive forecasting and embedded treasury services are no longer nice to have but table stakes for large global enterprises.

For banks, this represents a new landscape. Treasury services can no longer be commodity deposit sweeps. The treasurer’s domain is now center stage, and banks that understand this are repositioning accordingly.

Read also: AI, Cyber Risk and Payments Monetization Put Treasury at the Center of Finance

Treasurers Trade Ledgers for Live Data Engines

The convergence of data analytics, cloud platforms, artificial intelligence, and blockchain and stablecoins has transformed treasury solutions from passive enablers into active growth engines. For corporate treasurers, ledger-based, periodic treasury increasingly no longer suffices. The function is moving squarely into the strategic enablement zone, with fee-based treasury services gaining traction.

This transformation isn’t just about efficiency or automation; it’s about redefining the role of liquidity in corporate strategy. As interest rates, geopolitical shocks and supply chain disruptions reshape global markets, liquidity visibility has become a board-level concern. The treasury function, once the final stop in the accounting cycle, is increasingly the first line of strategic insight.

PYMNTS Intelligence found that treasurers increasingly see AI not as a convenience but as a necessity for maintaining competitiveness in an environment where cash flow and visibility are crucial.

“For an international bank like us, there’s always something going on somewhere in the world that’s requiring us to be cognizant of multiple outcomes,” Andrew Fullam, chief financial officer, U.S. & Americas at HSBC, told PYMNTS in an interview posted Oct. 17.

The treasury conversation used to be about control, but now it’s increasingly about velocity, particularly as companies start to realize that the faster they can move money, and the more clearly they can trace its path, the easier they can deploy resources for growth and not just protection.

See also: Why Time to Cash Is New Benchmark for Cross-Border B2B Growth

From Cash Custody to Strategic Intelligence

Against today’s backdrop of innovation, enterprise treasuries are becoming platforms of decision intelligence. They measure, forecast and manage cash, liquidity and risk in near-real time. The upsides are fewer idle balances, lower financing costs, higher return on working capital, and more strategic influence in the CFO’s office.

Predictive cash flow engines are now ingesting real-time data from ERP, procurement and sales systems, learning from historical patterns and external variables like exchange rates, commodity prices and seasonal demand. The goal isn’t just to forecast cash needs but to simulate scenarios.

“One thing that all treasury organizations are looking for is visibility into their global activity,” Sebastian Sintes, director of transactional FX at Bank of America, told PYMNTS in an interview posted Sept. 8.

“For the corporate organizations that have been making some heavy investments into their system infrastructure, that return on that investment is going to start to be felt in the upcoming years…,” he added.

The traditional metaphor of the back office no longer applies. The systems that once reconciled yesterday’s transactions are now forecasting tomorrow’s liquidity. The tools designed to safeguard cash are now deploying it for growth. The professionals once tasked with minimizing risk are now helping define opportunity.

In this sense, treasury has become the front door of financial innovation.

Although token-based settlement is still nascent compared with automation and forecasting, digital cash ledgers and blockchain use are also emerging to offer transformative potential to treasury teams.

Citi’s own Treasury and Trade Solutions group shared that it is extending tokenization and programmable money capabilities to corporate clients. This enables instant cross-border liquidity and more automated cash management. These developments align with the architectural vision for treasuries, connected through APIs, governed by data standards, and designed for continuous, real-time operation.

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