GOLD CASH MANAGEMENT WINNER………In 2005, PepsiCo Inc.'s treasury helped develop a sophisticated system that provided a single view of its global cash in bank accounts. But while treasury was dealing with euros and rupees, it also had its hand in tackling the problem of nickels and dimes facing

its Frito-Lay division. At 47,000 of the 430,000 retail locations, sales representatives would deliver orders of Frito-Lay snacks, generate an electronic bill on the spot and then wait for the clerk to count out the money to pay for the delivery. Needless to say, the reps ended up carrying increasingly more cash–collecting cumulatively about $1 billion annually. At the end of the day, they would convert it into money orders and overnight the deposits to the corporate lockbox. The process was dangerous, time-consuming and error-prone. For the corporate treasury, it meant delayed access to funds.

So, PepsiCo's treasury posed a question: Would these merchants be willing to move to electronic payment if the right program were offered to them in the right way? Although the assumption was that these customers–convenience stores, Mom-and-Pop grocers and delis–would be a hard group to convert, treasury discovered that many of these enterprises already had entered the world of electronic banking by accepting state Electronic Benefit Transfer cards or selling state lottery tickets. The decision became obvious: build a payment system that was easy to use, secure and helpful to the merchants. The answer was SmartPay, a campaign to get merchants to authorize ACH debits from their bank accounts by signing the slip from the hand-held electronic device.