Corporate Treasury

A treasury team makes sure the company can pay its bills every day and does not leave cash idle. The treasury team collects the balances from all bank accounts, forecasts incoming and outgoing payments, moves money between group companies through cash pooling and invests or borrows the difference. The treasury team hedges currency and interest rate risk, manages the company's bank relationships and, in larger groups, issues bonds and commercial paper.

Treasury management is the name for this work, and a treasury management system (TMS) is the software that runs it: it pulls bank statements, holds the cash forecast, records deals and hedges and sends payment files to the banks. In Germany, Austria, Switzerland and France many companies exchange those files over EBICS, a standard for data exchange between a bank and its corporate clients that covers credit transfers, direct debits, account statements and cash management. The Verband Deutscher Treasurer, founded in 1997, is a professional association for Corporate Treasury in the German-speaking region, with more than 2,000 members from nearly 900 companies (in German).

Since Regulation (EU) 2024/886 took effect, every payment service provider in the euro area that offers SEPA credit transfers must also offer instant credit transfers, credited within ten seconds at any hour. Money that used to arrive the next business day now arrives in seconds, and a cash position that treasury checked once a morning can change at night or on a Sunday. The instant payments in Europe page sets out the deadlines.

Stablecoins are the second new rail. Under MiCA, a euro stablecoin is an e-money token that only a bank or an e-money institution may issue, backed by reserves and redeemable at par. AllUnity, a Frankfurt company set up by DWS, Flow Traders and Galaxy, issues the euro stablecoin EURAU under a BaFin e-money license. A treasury that pays suppliers in stablecoins needs custody for the tokens and a way to exchange them back into euros on its bank account. The report Stablecoins: The Operating Layer for Global B2B Payments by Finance Loop and Venturebloxx looks at these questions for cross-border business payments.

Stablecoin treasury management adds a blockchain settlement rail alongside bank accounts and the existing treasury management system. A company can receive stablecoins from customers, move balances between group entities, pay counterparties, or convert tokens into bank money through an on-ramp or off-ramp. Each flow needs a named legal entity, approved wallet, responsible operator, accounting entry and conversion route before production begins.

The operating model separates balances needed for pending payments from funds kept in bank accounts for ordinary obligations. Treasury defines which counterparties accept each token and network, where conversion occurs, and how wallet activity reaches the ERP or TMS. The dedicated pages on stablecoin payments and stablecoin settlement explain the payment and discharge steps behind that model.

A stablecoin payment can settle outside banking hours, but the treasury still needs bank money before minting and after redemption. Under Article 49 of MiCA, an e-money token holder has a claim against the issuer and may request redemption at any time, at par value and without a redemption fee. The practical route can still involve provider eligibility, transfer limits, conversion spreads and bank settlement windows.

Treasury therefore sizes a stablecoin buffer against expected outflows and the tested time required to replenish or redeem it. The team records which provider can deliver liquidity on each network, how weekend movements reach the bank ledger, and which backup route applies during an outage. A pilot should include small minting and redemption tests before any material supplier, customer or intercompany flow depends upon them.

Custody determines who controls the keys and who can authorize a stablecoin transfer. A regulated custodian can hold the assets and apply approval policies, while a self-custodial model keeps signing authority inside the company and requires its own recovery process. The stablecoin custody page explains key management, segregation, access and provider responsibilities in greater detail.

The control design should assign roles, require multiple approvals for material transfers, restrict destinations through address allowlists and set transaction limits. Every address change needs independent verification and a waiting period before use, because a confirmed blockchain transfer is usually irreversible. Incident procedures should cover compromised credentials, unavailable signers, incorrect networks, frozen tokens and interrupted on-ramp or off-ramp services.

Provider selection begins with the contracting entity, regulatory status and exact services available to the company in each jurisdiction. Treasury and compliance can verify issuers and crypto-asset service providers in the current ESMA MiCA register. The review then confirms supported tokens, networks, fiat accounts, custody arrangements, safeguarding, screening responsibilities and permitted customer types.

Commercial diligence tests quoted conversion spreads, transfer limits, settlement service levels, funding cutoffs and incident support with realistic volumes. Technical diligence covers APIs, approval workflows, ERP or TMS integration, statements, audit logs and data export during provider exit. The business guide from Stripe identifies wallets, payments infrastructure, treasury integration, bank connectivity and compliance controls as separate parts of the operating stack.

Every stablecoin movement creates an onchain transaction record, but that record does not identify the invoice, legal entity or accounting treatment by itself. Reconciliation matches the blockchain transaction with the wallet or custodian balance, provider statement, bank movement and ERP entry. Exceptions should identify wrong networks, duplicate postings, unmatched fees, delayed conversions and transfers awaiting compliance review.

Accounting classification depends on the token terms, purpose, redemption rights and applicable reporting framework. Treasury, accounting and external auditors should agree on recognition, measurement, foreign-exchange treatment, fees and evidence before production volume begins. Month-end evidence normally includes address ownership, approval logs, transaction hashes, provider statements, bank confirmations and the reconciliation between every ledger involved.

Banks offer treasurers a second form of digital money: the tokenized deposit, a bank deposit recorded on a distributed ledger that stays a claim on the bank and keeps its deposit protection. A stablecoin passes between holders like a bearer token, while a tokenized deposit moves from bank to bank the way a transfer does and can settle a trade the moment the ledger updates.

German treasuries have also used the ledger to raise money. In September 2024 Siemens issued a 300 million euro, one-year digital bond under the German Electronic Securities Act (eWpG). According to Siemens, it settled on the SWIAT blockchain within minutes and in central bank money through the Bundesbank trigger solution, while its first digital bond of 60 million euros in 2023 took two days to settle. On 21 September 2026, the Eurosystem launched Pontes, which links DLT platforms with its TARGET Services so that wholesale DLT transactions can settle in central bank money.

In treasury, AI is used for cash forecasting: a model reads past bank statements, open invoices and orders from the ERP system and predicts the balance per account and day. Treasury teams also use it to match incoming payments to open invoices. AI agents go a step further and prepare or release payments on their own, which raises the question of who authorized a payment and who is liable when it goes wrong. Capital & Code, a Frankfurt conference with Finance Loop as media partner, has put Corporate Treasury and agentic payments on its program.

Finance Loop activates curated expert networks for emerging technologies in finance across Central European financial centers. A stablecoin treasury project can require corporate treasurers, payments operators, custodians, regulated crypto-asset service providers, compliance specialists, accountants and legal experts. Finance Loop brings companies together with specialists and practitioners from those functions and jurisdictions.

Introductions, focused roundtables, reports, training, webinars and events bring these participants together around a defined operating decision. Finance Loop supported When Banks Say 'No' for compliance and treasury teams and is media partner for Capital & Code, where stablecoins and treasury operations belong on the agenda. Project owners retain their commercial decisions, while appointed legal, accounting and regulatory professionals remain responsible for their specialist conclusions.

Corporate Treasury is the part of a company's finance function that manages cash, liquidity, funding and financial risk. Corporate Treasury forecasts cash, moves money between accounts and group companies, hedges currency and interest rate risk and deals with the company's banks.

A treasury management system (TMS) is the software a treasury team works in. The treasury management system collects bank statements, builds the cash forecast, records deals and hedges and sends payment files to the banks, in Germany often over EBICS.

MiCA sets the rules for the issuers of e-money tokens such as EURAU, which must be banks or e-money institutions. The company needs custody for the tokens and a bank or crypto-asset service provider that exchanges them back into euros.

Tokenized cash usually means tokenized bank deposits: money in a bank account recorded on a ledger, still a claim on that bank and covered by deposit protection. A stablecoin is a token issued against reserves that passes between holders and has no deposit protection. The hub comparison lines up both.