BofA expands payment push as clients shift liquidity

Treasury functions move closer to board-level decisions.

Bank of America (BofA) is expanding its payment and technology push in Singapore as corporate and wealth clients restructure liquidity and treasury strategies in response to war risk and fragmented trade flows.

Christian Stolcke, head of financial institutions and governments at the bank’s Global Payments Solutions unit, said clients are shifting expectations on what treasury functions should deliver.

He said treasury is moving closer to core decision-making as companies prioritise resilience over efficiency in trade, investment, and cash management.

“Clients expect relationship managers to connect markets, products, and platforms, and translate macro conditions into actionable treasury strategies,” Stolcke said in an emailed reply to questions.

He said war risk and supply chain disruption are changing how companies manage cash, many of them spreading funding sources and reducing reliance on single liquidity channels. “Liquidity is being kept closer to home markets,” he pointed out.

Stolcke said treasury teams are taking on wider responsibilities, including capital structure decisions, funding diversification, and scenario planning, rather than focusing only on cash execution.

“As treasury moves from the back office to the boardroom as a strategic function, relationship managers are increasingly acting as advisors on resilience, capital efficiency, and transformation,” he said.

He added that cross-border flows are increasingly shifting into regional corridors, making liquidity management more complex and harder to centralise.

The bank is responding by expanding real-time and cross-border payment infrastructure, including work on interoperability across domestic systems, as well as exploring programmable payments and digital money capabilities.

Stolcke said clients are also prioritising tighter control over liquidity positioning amid uncertainty tied to war risk and supply chain disruption.

BofA has rolled out tools such as CashPro and i-Receivables to improve payment processing, reconciliation, and cash visibility across jurisdictions.

He said the aim is to improve decision inputs for clients managing more complex cash and funding structures, not just transactional efficiency.

Stolcke took note of Singapore’s ecosystem of local regulators, financial institutions, and technology players. This “makes it an ideal environment to scale real-time payments, digital money, and AI-enabled solutions,” Stolcke said.

BofA’s plans in the city include scaling real-time and next-generation payments infrastructure by exploring interoperability across domestic and cross-border schemes.

The bank will also explore digital money and programmable payments capabilities, he said.