Introduction

The 2025 global macroeconomic outlook indicates a high degree of uncertainty amid the potential for dynamic interest rates and ongoing geopolitical risks. In addition, finance professionals will want to be more proactive in an effort to enhance financial resilience in a dynamic market. Data will be a lynchpin to this goal, especially as industry initiatives like ISO help to make data more accessible within and outside their organization.

Our annual Forecasting Payments report helps break down how treasurers can respond to these considerations. Below are what’s on treasurers minds in the coming year.  

Trend 1: Steering working capital management

In today's turbulent economic environment, treasurers face a myriad of challenges, from volatile interest rates to supply chain disruptions and fluctuating foreign exchange rates. To navigate these complexities, treasurers must adopt a proactive approach to working capital management, ensuring liquidity needs are met and financial resilience is fortified.

Step 1: Build real-time cash flow analytics

Treasurers can better anticipate future cash needs—and stress test for potential challenges—if they can more easily monitor cash positions, inflows and outflows in real time (discussed in more detail within Trend 4). They can increase the visibility and transparency of cash flow reports with the integration of ERP and bank account transaction data, as well as by consolidating all this data into a shared dashboard.

Step 2: Improve operations

Treasurers should identify liquidity and account solutions to close gaps that impede their ability to instantly move money anytime and anywhere. They might also adopt global liquidity account structures or enable automatic sweeps to support just-in-time funding. To support these global solutions, they’ll want to redefine their organizational structure to include centralized structures such as regional treasury centers or in-house banks.

Step 3: Optimize cash conversion cycle

Finance professionals have direct strategic opportunities to optimize their payables and receivables to impact their cash conversion cycle. On the payables side, they can analyze payment terms, types and behaviors, as well as work with procurement to standardize vendor terms and payment preferences. On the receivables side, they can adjust customer terms and enhance credit and collection policies that may increase the speed at which they can receive cash and put it to use.

Trend 2: Combating new threat vectors

Fraud remains a mounting challenge. Take Business Email Compromise (BEC) scams, which costs the average victim $137,000¹ and grows in losses by 16% annually. Finance professionals can take measures to prevent these incidents across their providers, processes and employees.

Step 1: Prioritize third-party provider safeguards

Organizations should think about third-party providers that interact with their systems, as their vulnerabilities run the risk of becoming yours. It’s critical to perform due diligence and enact policies, such as comprehensive verification processes, that include formal callbacks. It may also be wise to introduce liability clauses in agreements, especially when it impacts payment details that require additional validation.

Step 2: Safeguard disbursement processes

Consider process opportunities to safeguard money that an organization sends, such as minimizing physical payments like checks. It’s also important to implement steps to identify suspicious transactions as quickly as possible to increase the likelihood of reversing them. For instance, your organization should move toward daily reconciliation as well as develop a plan to flag transactions in automated processes that require additional attention. Consider partnering with external support teams to identify additional measures.

Step 3: Enhance employee education

Organizations should go beyond generic phishing tests, and employees should understand how to guard against the ever-evolving fraud landscape. They should feel empowered to challenge executive management requests that are out of process to mitigate social engineering attacks, and businesses should provide continuous fraud education to finance teams. This group should understand paths or methods that attackers use to gain unauthorized access to a system, as well as participate in simulations such as regular tabletop and red team exercises.

Trend 3: Driving the data strategy

Treasurers must get data right if they want to take treasury to the next level and access of all the benefits it can offer. For this to occur, treasurers must make a multi-step plan to drive their own data strategy.

Step 1: Collaborate on data

Treasurers should first collaborate with chief technologists and chief information officers to align on firm-wide data tools and security management. Within this working group’s context, treasurers can establish data governance upfront to ensure their approach aligns with firm-wide frameworks for data management and security. It also helps them to build and refine a data strategy that’s mindful of the available tools and technological frameworks within an organization.

Step 2: Integrate data

Next comes the task of building a strong data foundation, which requires the consolidation of all relevant data from banks, fintechs and other third-party providers into a single view. This task is much easier said than done, as each platform can vary in its accessibility as well as what information is provided and how data is structured. This is where strong relationships with CIOs and CTOs can pay dividends, as these executives and their teams can help work through roadblocks by taking advantage of integration solutions like APIs to determine what data is feasible to acquire.

Step 3: Analyze data

Given integration complexities, treasurers should begin analyzing data—even if isn’t perfect. They should work with internal and external partners to access new tools that can make this data accessible to them, and explore ways that this information can inform business decisions in the interim while they build out their broader solution. Throughout the analysis, they should flag opportunities to enrich the quality and value of the data for improved observations and build it into their strategy.

Trend 4: Realizing the value of faster payments

Businesses will feel increasing pressure to offer faster payment options as customer interest grows. Roughly 92%² of U.S. consumers have used a digital payment in the past year, and Zelle³ payments have grown by 50% each year since 2017. Meanwhile, EU instant payment transactions are forecasted to grow from 3 billion⁴ in 2024 to 30 billion in 2028. Every jurisdiction offers its own solutions, and with so many options, treasurers must thoughtfully consider which ones fit for their needs.

Step 1: Identify business opportunities

Treasurers can use faster payments to enhance relationships with a business’s customers and vendors. For instance, faster payments can help customers make online purchases, pay a bill or receive an insurance claim, and they can occur anywhere from push to card, pay by bank, a BNPL program or P2P payment. With all of this variety, treasurers should work with internal stakeholders (IT and business units) to understand their customers’ (or vendors’) unique needs and how to build the most user-friendly experience. In each case, they should also understand the liquidity and settlement model as well as balance the need for speed with the end-to-end cost and finality of the settled funds.

Step 2: Identify treasurer-specific opportunities

Real-time payments can also enhance the treasurer’s ability to manage liquidity and internal cash flows. They can help to control the time of settlement, and as a result, treasurers can leverage them to enhance their cash flow forecasts and potentially reap benefits such as greater transparency or reduced costs. Like with external opportunities, treasurers must ensure that their platforms can support these goals.

Step 3: Keep tabs on innovation

Faster payments are evolving so quickly, and treasurers should keep tabs on new developments that could further serve their business. For instance, there’s increasing opportunity to use faster payments within biometric payments, embedded finance apps or across channels via an omnichannel solution. Separately, intergovernmental⁵ forums like G20 are aiming to increase the speed of cross-border payments by 2027, so treasurers may begin to see international use cases open up—especially as ISO 20022 creates standardization across jurisdictions. Given all these opportunities, treasurers should collaborate with external banking and fintech partners to understand how they should update their backend systems to enable these goals.

Trend 5: Building the skills of tomorrow

All of the above innovations speak to the need for finance and treasury functions to boost their skills in a few areas. They must enhance their technical and analytical proficiency to apply data to support the fundamentals of their job, and take a “digital-first” mindset so that technology can automate cumbersome aspects of their role. They should build strong stakeholder relationships with people inside and outside their organization to collaborate on business goals. Across all these areas, they must remain adaptive to change. This is easier said than done, as 60% of companies cite significant issues in areas like upskilling and retaining new talent. That’s why treasurers will want to identify every possible opportunity to attract and develop talent that understands foundational concepts and is future-oriented in order to adopt those changes that will truly benefit finance.

Step 1: Develop internal programming

Treasurers can expand university recruitment efforts to those with computer science and engineering backgrounds with experience in datasets and applications. Through this effort, they can grow their teams to include those who can help them automate cumbersome manual processes. For stakeholder management, they can develop rotational programs and mentorship opportunities so that current and new employees can learn the varied perspectives of other divisions.

Step 2: Identify external programming

Treasurers without a technical background will also want to uplevel their technological savvy and instincts. They can do this by attending industry events to stay on top of trends and best practices, and can seek professional qualifications or advanced degrees to gain new skills across coding, technology and business leadership.

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