Modern commerce doesn’t operate in cycles, it operates in real time.
Empowered by today’s technology, businesses operate across borders with ease. Airlines, online travel agencies (OTAs), e-commerce platforms, and other multinational businesses move money round the clock across markets, currencies, and time zones.
Treasury operations are staying ahead of this growing tide of global payments. As global commerce becomes increasingly real-time and interconnected, treasury operations are evolving – overcoming structured cycles and systems to take advantage of treasury platforms that promise better visibility, intelligence, and adaptability.
From static to smart systems
Manual, batch-based treasury operations, while operationally reliable, are out of sync with the demands of modern commerce, particularly consumer preference for always-on systems and no cut-off periods.
Cutting-edge treasury technology now enables smarter, increasingly on-chain treasury operations that support real-time global commerce, all with no cut-off times. They also accommodate a shift away from mere visibility over cash towards increasing speed and automation – enabled by artificial intelligence (AI) and real-time infrastructure like blockchain.
Blockchain provides a programmable, transparent, and near-instantaneous settlement layer – an extension of distributed ledger technology (DLT) that provides shared and immutable digital records of transactions across multiple participants, in the form of digital money like bank-issued tokenised deposits that maintain price stability while enabling faster settlement across digital networks.
A growing amount of global payments now run on these blockchain-based rails. Bank-owned permissioned ledgers and blockchain-based Real-Time Treasury Management Solutions move digital money on private blockchains globally, 24 hours a day, with near-instant settlement, richer data, and alignment with evolving regulatory standards.
Some blockchain payment solutions marry the best of both worlds – supporting both conventional currencies and advanced forms of digital value, like tokenised deposits and settlement tokens.
Intelligence reshapes treasury’s role
Combine AI automation with the efficiency of blockchain, and treasury oversight becomes predictive, not just reactive.
By recognising patterns in large repositories of data, AI-powered platforms provide real-time intelligence that helps treasury teams anticipate where volatility is building before it hits markets, and make informed decisions more quickly.
Ant International leverages its Time Series Transformer (TST) AI model to manage cash flow and FX exposure on an hourly, daily, and weekly basis. Since its deployment, it has forecasted the company's FX exposure with up to 90% accuracy and reduced its FX costs by up to 60%.
Cost reduction comes with the territory. A 2024 PwC benchmarking report found finance teams using AI to “spend more time generating insights and less time on automatable tasks, while reducing their costs by nearly 25%.”
These cost and insight dividends can help treasuries move from being a cost centre within the company to a more central role as a strategic growth engine.
First, treasury departments can now play an active role in optimising revenue through yield optimisation, liquidity efficiency, and FX margin improvement 24/7. Secondly, treasuries can now actively guide enterprise strategy as their company’s strategic business partner: sharing their data-driven insights to drive decision-making.
And third, treasury can use its real-time visibility and AI-driven predictive capabilities to maximise operational resilience in today’s fragmented global economy.
24/7 treasury in a non-stop global economy
Consider airlines and OTAs – two industries on the leading edge of treasury technology out of sheer necessity. Businesses in these sectors cater to global consumers and process large volumes of international payments. A McKinsey report suggests the airline industry processes about 2.9 billion payment transactions annually, valued at $1 trillion.
The continuous flow of bookings they receive across time zones means FX costs are one of the largest operational expenses within their treasuries.
Managing currency exposures, reconciling transactions across institutions, and maintaining liquidity across different currencies can add up to significant operational costs for these businesses. Airlines, for example, spend over $20 billion annually on payment-related expenses.
Other costs can take the form of revenue-versus-cost currency mismatches, as well as invisible margin erosion and blocked funds. For example, airlines had $1.2 billion in blocked funds globally as of October 2025 – funds that could have been used for expenses such as fuel, maintenance, and salaries.
Airlines and OTAs are well-placed to use AI-enabled platforms to manage FX costs, risks and exposure. In a shift from simple visibility to greater automation, treasury professionals can move beyond dashboards to automated workflows and decision-making – leveraging their existing treasury data into a competitive advantage.
Traditional FX hedging often requires businesses to lock in rates without clear forecasts of their actual FX exposure. AI, on the other hand, helps businesses develop more informed forecasts, which can facilitate more precise and cost-effective hedging for airlines.
Building a resilient treasury in a fragmented global economy
In the long run, treasury’s AI-powered shift from reactive risk mitigation to adaptive, real-time orchestration can help companies program resilience into their wider business operations, which is especially important given today’s fragmented global economy.
From their more central position as a strategic partner, treasury teams can shape how the business responds to disruption. They can leverage a clearer view of liquidity across markets to direct how funds move through the organisation and beyond it. They can manage multiple rails and instruments within their treasury ecosystem to sustain operations under changing conditions.
That includes using tokenised deposits and settlement tokens to enable continuous transfers and faster settlement between financial institutions, as well as supporting suppliers and partners where access to liquidity is constrained.
In a global market where money never stops moving, the competitive edge will not come from reacting faster but from deciding earlier.
Bettr brings together next-generation blockchain-based and AI-powered treasury infrastructure to enable exactly this shift, helping businesses manage liquidity, optimise FX exposure, and operate across borders with greater speed and precision. Our real-time treasury solutions are ISO 20022-compliant, meeting industry-leading security benchmarks for secure global money movement.
Interested to know more? Contact us today so we can grow your business globally with the right solutions.
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