Cash Management through connections – the top 2025 trends

Efficient cash management is increasingly becoming a question of having the right connections – both in terms of advisory and data integration. SEB’s experts share their views on the 2025 top Cash Management trends.  

A change in the treasury landscape requires more proactive banks

New tools and platforms create plenty of possibilities within cash management. This development does, however, require more from the corporations’ banks.

Firstly, the banks need to have functioning integrations with the corporations’ service providers of choice. Secondly, there are growing expectations that banks become more involved in the corporations’ financial ecosystems and provide advice on improvements.

“Our clients wish for us to help them work more efficiently and take a bigger role in their everyday challenges. It is about being proactive by providing insights and thought leadership”, says Malin Rössel, Head of Cash Management Sales at SEB. 

Harri Rantanen, Business Developer at SEB, adds:

“We strive to find the best possible vendors on the market and connect to them. The combination of our own offering and that of our partners, means we are able to serve our customers holistically. When linking all systems together, we can help create a more efficient whole.”

Increased cyber security and fraud awareness

According to SEB’s experts, cybersecurity and fraud is now on the top of the agenda in almost every meeting with corporates. 

“We have conversations on how we can help our clients if they get attacked and how they, internally, can prepare in the best possible way”, says Malin Rössel.

This is also an area where SEB is looking for suitable partnerships with external vendors, to be able to offer its customers efficient toolsets. For example, it can be about helping corporates increase the security in their payment processes, through different vendor data validation solutions that ensure payment delivery to the right counterparties.

”Combining external state-of-the-art tools with the bank’s own payment process information and security controls, makes the best solution available”, Harri Rantanen explains.

APIs becoming more than a buzzword

For quite some time, APIs – Application Programming Interfaces allowing applications to automatically communicate with each other – have been the talk of town. In the financial universe, APIs make, for example, real time account balances and tracking of international payments possible. 

The list of potential usage areas of APIs is endless, and all companies have different needs. A recent shift can, be seen in the approach to APIs, with many corporates now running pilots and making more concrete plans. 

“Nowadays our clients ask about APIs in much more detail. They want to know how these can be used in everyday business. It is a sign that API-based integration is no longer seen as something that will spur customers’ efficiency in the future – it is happening here and now”, says Tommy Adriansson, Head of Liquidity Management at SEB.

New requirements for payments

As for payments, new legal requirements will come into play. One example is a change in the EU’s Instant Payments Regulation. From October 2025, instant SEPA payments, available on the recipient’s account within ten seconds, will have to be part of the SEPA area banks’ offering, in parallel to normal SEPA payments. At the same time, a feature called “Verification of Payee” is introduced, which requires the inclusion of more – and correct – information about the recipient in both invoicing and payment data. 

 “Quicker payments are of course welcomed by corporates. But when big batches are sent and some payments bounce, for example due to some letters in the recipient’s name being wrong, it causes hiccups. Solving this problem will require a lot of work by banks, system providers, as well as the corporates themselves”, says Harri Rantanen. 

Harri predicts similar changes regarding payment data will also be seen in international payments, outside of the SEPA area. This would, for example, enable better screening of recipients against sanction lists and delimit payments to flow to inappropriate beneficiaries. Summarising the development he says it constitutes “significant process changes among the stakeholders in the payment ecosystem”.