Partnering with banks for expertise and resources to hold on to the competitive edge.
Payments innovation creates both opportunities and challenges for US treasurers; and understanding how to optimize liquidity and bring about greater operational efficiency with the ever-evolving transformations in real-time payments, open banking, and embedded finance lies at the heart of treasury’s future. Partnering with banks can help treasurers access the best tools, expertise, and resources needed to stay competitive.
Bank of America (BofA) takes the award as Best Bank for Transaction Banking, servicing one in five midsize companies with revenue of $5 million to $2 billion operating in the US. BofA invests heavily in technology, offering online banking platforms, mobile applications, and application programming interfaces (APIs), for seamless cash management and integration with corporate treasury systems. In mid-2023, BofA brought together Global Transaction Services and Enterprise Payments under the umbrella of Global Payments Solutions, to strengthen and focus resources and efforts to improve the payment experience for all client segments.
Citi is a double winner, as Best Bank for Cash Management and for Best Corporate Cross-Border Payments Solution. Debopama Sen, head of Payments at Citi, said, at the Citi Services Investor Day in June, that the bank has a broad suite of products and solutions in four core areas: domestic payments and payment acceptance, cross-border network, clearing, and commercial cards. “Through this product suite, we are addressing our client’s key needs, on the right-hand side, along the full payments continuum of accept, hold, pay, and finance—from facilitating payroll payments to gig economy payouts, like paying app developers, to managing receivables from their customers.” She added, “We are laser focused on enabling digital commerce.”
BNY, this year’s winner as Best Bank for Payments, has been busy rolling out payments innovations over the past year. A new aggregated payment platform, Vaia, can help give US-based institutions access to the latest digital payment options for disbursements. The open banking payments solution BankifySM can help organizations receive consumer payments from bank accounts with a seamless user experience and offers guaranteed funds for business receivables. BNY is keeping pace with real-time payments and the demand for faster and safer disbursements. The bank is an active participant in the FedNow instant payment rail. BNY has also formed a strategic alliance with MoCaFi (Mobility Capital Finance), a leading Black-founded and mostly Black-led fintech platform, to help extend payment options to unbanked and underbanked individuals in the US.
BMO, our Best Bank for Collections award winner, provides cross-border cash management solutions. These were recently restructured to have ownership of cash management collections solutions across Canada and the US, to ensure better cross-border parity and interoperability of the bank’s products. New products include the next generation of BMO’s remote deposit-capture product, DepositEdge, to serve both the US and Canada as a single solution. BMO is also working on enhancing AI and machine learning capabilities to support customer reconciliation of received payments and further improve the cross-border customer experience.
Citizens wins as Best Bank for Long-Term Liquidity Management. Its liquidity management platform, accessLiquidity, provides a comprehensive dashboard view of a client’s liquidity positions, with detailed information across a wide spectrum of deposits and investments, which empowers clients to make well-informed decisions and execute money market trades at their convenience, without having to consult a banker.
Offering an institutional share class with same-day liquidity to institutions and individuals, North Capital is our winner as Best Provider of Short-Term Investments/Money Market Funds. Via its North Capital Treasury Money Market Fund (NCGXX), it hopes to encourage all types of investors to incorporate NCGXX into their liquidity management. Being a government money market fund, it offers great safety. By modernizing infrastructure, banks can seamlessly integrate new technologies, such as real-time payments and open banking APIs—allowing corporates to benefit from faster transactions, better data analysis, and improved cash flow management.
| North America | |
|---|---|
| Best Bank for Transaction Banking* | Bank of America |
| Best Bank for Cash Management | Citi |
| Best Corporate Cross-Border Payments Solution* | Citi |
| Best Bank for Payments | BNY |
| Best Bank for Collections | BMO |
| Best Bank for Long-Term Liquidity Management | Citizens |
| Best Provider of Short-Term Investments/Money Market Funds |
North Capital |
