Banks Are Competing for the Whole Treasury Relationship

Corporate treasurers and their banks are approaching many of the same challenges from different directions, a dynamic on full display at AFP 2026.

Treasurers want a clearer picture of their money and the risks around it. Banks want to earn more business from customers, particularly big deposits that anchor relationships. The opportunity for both lies in making financial data more useful at decision time.

Jessica Cheney, Vice President, Head of Banking Solutions at Bottomline, sees that opportunity reordering the conversation around corporate banking. Banks have access to valuable information about their customers, she says, but they must turn it into services that help businesses manage cash, make payments, and recognize risk.

“I think they are starting to become much more aggressive about competing for the full financial relationship,” Cheney says, “and deposit growth is a major driver.”

That competition gives the discussions at AFP this year a practical edge going into an uncertain 2027. AI, real-time payments, and tokenized money may command attention, but Cheney says leaders should question what they actually accomplish.

The Renewed Pursuit of Deposits

Cheney has noticed growing interest among banks in a segment that, in her view, has not always received enough attention: small businesses (SMBs).

She notes that banks which were not previously talking about the SMB sector seem to be showing outsized interest lately. AFP draws a more middle-market and corporate audience, but the push for deposits extends across business sizes.

Many small businesses already use fintechs for invoicing, cash flow management, and payment origination. Banks seeking to strengthen those relationships have a foundation to work from: They know their customers’ balances and payment histories.

“It’s really about the banks using data and AI to become more valuable to their businesses, whether they are small businesses or corporates,” Cheney says. In turn, she believes that will help banks protect their primary deposit relationships and compete more effectively.

For treasurers at larger companies, value may come from bringing financial information together in a form they can act on. Banks hold part of that picture; corporate ERPs hold another. Risk and fraud partners can contribute additional information.

Treasurers can use independent tools to find some of what they need, Cheney says, but still lack a complete view. “I think that’s what they’re trying to solve for,” she says. “Who can help me get that complete contextual picture?”

She sees banks working with technology partners as well placed to provide this.

Real-time Information Gets Really Useful

For Cheney, real-time payments and information are becoming an expectation. The more consequential opportunity is helping businesses decide what to do with all that velocity.

“Should I make this payment right now? What’s the best way to send it? What will it do to my liquidity if I do X versus Y?” she says, picturing treasury thought processes.

AI can help with those questions by drawing attention to changes a treasurer might otherwise have to discover across several systems. An overnight shift in foreign exchange, an unexpected incoming payment, or a payment to a new beneficiary could each warrant a closer look.

Instead of requiring a treasurer to search for a problem, Cheney says, technology can surface what has changed and what needs attention. “These are things we can use AI for in a proactive way, to surface those things without someone having to ask the question.”

She also expects interoperability to become a more prominent topic at AFP, and after. In her view, tokenized money movement and Defi could soon offer another way to connect cross-border and domestic payments across a fragmented real-time environment.

But Cheney sees a distance between the technology conversation among banks and the problems corporate customers bring to them. “I don’t think that banking’s desire to jump into tokenized money movement has yet gelled with the corporate need for it,” she says.

A company may be looking for a better way to manage overnight FX exposure or make a cross-border payment. A financial institution might come to offer a stablecoin-based solution, but the customer is unlikely to begin by asking for a tokenized Money movement vehicle.

Her advice to banks is to show corporates how these new offerings can solve the practical problems they already have, such as managing overnight FX exposure or making a cross-border payment.

Moving Fraud Prevention Upstream

Better information can also help businesses and their banks recognize risk before payment is sent. Cheney says progress against fraud has been challenging, with institutions using AI to combat fraudsters who have access to the same technology, but using it for nefarious purposes.

That demands a strategy adjustment. One priority is to move fraud deterrence earlier in the payments cycle. That can include asking a customer to pause when something deserves another look. “Introduce friction where friction makes sense,” Cheney says. “People will understand if they have to stop and think.”

She also sees financial institutions becoming more open to sharing intelligence. Consortium data, combined with early risk signals, can help identify suspicious activity faster and more accurately than any institution using its own information alone.

That speed is crucial as payments and data get faster. It will also matter more as businesses explore agentic finance, where AI agents can act on a customer’s behalf. Cheney says banks will need to double down on the key protections they rely on today, including agent /user authentication, specific user entitlements, transaction limits and behavioral fraud checks.

“Until all of that can come together, including the ability to clearly identify authorized agents” she says, banks will be reluctant to open up to fully agentic commerce.

For Cheney, the task facing banks is to keep those controls effective while giving customers better ways to manage and move their money. The institutions that do both will have a stronger case for becoming that one most trusted partner holding the anchor deposit.