There has been plenty of talk about electronic bank account management (eBAM) for the last few years, but not a lot of action. That changed in October, when Bank of America Merrill Lynch announced that one of its corporate customers, USI Insurance Services, was live on eBAM. Despite that achievement, bankers and vendors said that there is still much work to be done before the technology reaches its full potential.

Dan Gill, senior vice president at Weiland Corporate Solutions, a unit of Fiserv, compared the first message sent in October with the first phone call, describing it as eBAM's "Alexander Graham Bell moment."

"We crossed that hurdle," Gill said. "Now it's a matter of getting more banks doing it, here and overseas." Given the interest in eBAM among corporate treasuries, he said, once the banks sign on, treasuries will follow.