Spurred by surges in both the volume and complexity of thepayments they manage, corporate treasurers entered 2020 with aheightened appetite for innovation. Our world now looks markedlydifferent, and businesses face a slew of new and unexpectedchallenges brought on by Covid-19. Cash and liquidity have taken centerstage—and for good reason. But 2020 will likely remain atransformative year for payments.

Even as the pandemic slows global and intraorganizationalexpansion, payment practices and technologies continue to adaptquickly, and they warrant companies' attention in the near term.From the rise of real-time payments to open banking and applicationprogramming interface (API)–based settlement networks, to SWIFT gpi, the payments landscape will undergotransformations across multiple fronts as we get deeper into theyear.

Here are three key shifts that corporate treasurers shouldconsider leveraging as the payments landscape evolves throughout2020, and as corporates' world—along with everyone else's—inchesback toward normalcy:

1. Real-time payments will make real progress.

Real-time payments are still in their infancy.Yet while the technology will take time to develop and reach itsfull potential, this space will experience a meaningful evolutionby the end of the year.

When finance folks think about "real-time payments," theytypically think timing, focusing on how much faster their businesswill be able to send and receive cash. But that isn't the onlybenefit. Real-time payments also provide instant communicationbetween companies and their financial institutions. This meansorganizations can send and receive funds multiple times a day.

Being able to pay a counterparty 24×7, and having payment arrivewithin seconds, moves a treasury team away from the mad dash to getwires out before cutoffs—sweating as they wait 15 minutes or moreto know the transactions settled properly—to a world where they cantake care of business anywhere and from any device. Faster paymentsenable businesses to manage cash flows more efficiently, accessfunds more quickly, and gain deeper visibility into transactions'details.

Another consideration is that once payments become faster andprogress with less friction, companies will inevitably have higherpayment volumes. Why is this important? Because treasurers'workloads are incessantly expanding. Prior to Covid-19, globalgrowth and increasing corporate merger and acquisition (M&A)activity were contributing factors to ever-more-dynamicenvironments that were constantly introducing new challenges totreasury workflows. Treasurers continue to face snowballingcomplexities because of it.

While much of the corporate wheeling and dealingoriginally planned for this year is now on pause, treasurersall hope to soon be back to managing treasury activitiespost-M&A and everything that goes with that: more banks, moreaccounts, more currencies, more connections, and more paymentformats. To control this sprawling complexity, treasurers will needto pursue automation and straight-through processing wherever thosecapabilities are available. In an ideal scenario, treasurers wouldgrant themselves three wishes: first, the ability to instantlyprocess and confirm payments without errors; second, instantconfirmation when incoming funds become available; and third, totaltransparency of payments throughout the processing pipeline. Whenit comes to completing payments at volume, every minute saved bymore efficient processes counts. Real-time payment technologieswill offer improvements in all these areas.

Existing settlement networks—such as Zelle, the RTP network from The Clearing House, and theEuropean Payments Council's SEPA Instant Credit Transfer—will continue tomature this year. At the same time, banks and financial technologyproviders will increasingly pool their capabilities to create newsettlement networks for real-time payments that are more expansiveand effective than what we've seen up to this point. These networkswill offer improved features, such as allowing larger transactionamounts. As this space evolves and the networks consolidate in2020, they will also begin to deliver more refined and efficientpayment processes.

It's important to note that hurdles remain for corporatetreasury. The transaction limits on the existing real-time paymentsettlement networks remain relatively low. Combined with a highercost than traditional ACH, the transaction limits will likely slowadoption in the short term. But the benefits are clear; theuser-friendly technology is advancing; and, despite Covid-19, theseinitiatives will continue to progress—although the anticipatedadoption of some of these initiatives will inevitably take a backseat in 2020 due to the current state of the economy.

2. Companies will face fewer obstacles to open banking.

"Open banking" is the initiative spurring financial institutionsto electronically and securely share information via application programming interfaces (APIs) andsimilar technologies. Open banking has laid the groundwork forreal-time payments to become a reality. Still, much workremains.

At present, the number of banks participating in the openbanking initiative is limited. Expanding participation is criticalto the ultimate success of open banking. In addition, for thosebanks that are participating, APIs need to cover a broader swath ofpayments, including transactions with higher dollar values; a widervariety of settlement types (e.g., wires, ACH transfers); and alifting of payment time restrictions, so that payments can bescheduled every five minutes, every hour, etc. Removing the currentlimits along these dimensions would expand the types of paymentsthat can be pushed through settlement networks via API.

As the open banking technologies underlying real-time paymentsbecome more flexible throughout 2020, a greater number of bankswill likely adopt open banking practices. Corporate treasury teamsshould ask their financial institutions the following questionsbefore embarking on an open banking journey:

• What APIs do you have available today? (Do your APIs enablepayment settlement, balance reporting, etc.?)
• What payment types and volumes do your APIs support?
• What customers or vendors are currently leveraging theseAPIs?
• What is the implementation time?
• What is the new cost structure for payments made in your openbanking framework?

The competitive motivations for banks are clear: Open bankingAPIs attract new corporate clients by enabling organizations tostreamline their bank connections, while also delivering bettervisibility into, and more control over, payments. Banking APIs canalso enable self-service options through which corporate treasurerscan complete onboarding processes and establish connectivitybetween the banking platform and the internal treasury managementsystem and related applications. This enables the corporatecustomer to achieve banking connectivity in much less time—just afew hours vs. four to six weeks—and might require fewer internalresources for the bank, as well.

These opportunities will probably prove inviting enough toinspire the industry to bring open banking into the mainstream overthe course of 2020.

3. SWIFT gpi will improve transparency of cross-bordertransactions.

While real-time payment networks are improving the speed andvisibility of in-country transactions, SWIFT gpi aims to perform the same functions forinternational payments. SWIFT gpi now offers universal paymenttracking in real time, equipping treasurers with total end-to-endvisibility as their payments progress through processing, evenacross borders. This functionality is analogous to having trackingon a package in transit, with the added capabilities to potentiallychange or stop the package at any point.

With the total transparency that SWIFT gpi offers, corporatetreasurers who make the transition will gain the ability to makemore timely and efficient decisions this year, better recognizeroadblocks, and ultimately achieve more rapid cross-border paymentprocessing.

Ashley Pater ischief product officer at GTreasury. She oversees the globalproduct group, ensuring that the product vision and strategy alignwith GTreasury's business objectives.