Modernising treasury towards Web3

01

Real-time everything

For customer-facing platforms, the ability to make real-time payments enables immediacy in many areas ranging from enhancing working capital management and merchant payouts, to subscription renewals and customer refunds. These capabilities are no longer aspirational. They are here today and deliver a strategic advantage for businesses that embed them deeply into the user experience.

Commonly referred to as “banking-as-a-service”, these capabilities are often enabled by APIs from banking partners. For businesses such as Shopee, a leading e-commerce platform in Southeast Asia, embedding real-time FX execution via solutions such as SC PrismFX is critical for its multi-market operations and expansion plans as it allows the efficient management of high-volume, multi-currency flows with pricing transparency and operational speed.

Real-time liquidity management is another essential complement. Leveraging blockchain – one of the foundational technologies of Web3, to move funds between entities instantaneously – opens new doors for liquidity visibility and control. This kind of infrastructure enables 24 by 7 access to working capital, immediate transaction finality, and precision in managing intra-day positions. Standard Chartered’s collaboration with Ant International is a clear example. Together, the innovation demonstrates how blockchain-based cross-border transfers can streamline liquidity movement and support real-time treasury operations in a real-world scenario.

As platforms and paytechs scale, many fintechs are forging alliances with banks to offer emerging forms of payments to accelerate collections, automate reconciliation and reduce overhead, benefiting both the platform and its merchants. By acting as a settlement intermediary, the platform can consolidate payment flows, improve cash visibility, and enable instant disbursements – elevating the merchant experience and delivering a smoother journey for end customers.

02

Programmable money, digital assets, and treasury automation

Programmability is a defining feature of Web3 and a game-changer for treasury. It enables rules-based execution of payments, disbursements, and liquidity flows, reducing manual effort and unlocking new levels of control, flexibility, and efficiency.

Treasurers are now exploring a range of programmable financial instruments. Two of the most prominent are stablecoins and tokenised deposits. While both are digital forms of money, their designs and use cases differ.

With speed, predictability, and smart contract compatibility, stablecoins are emerging as one of Web3’s most compelling “killer apps” for corporate treasury and finance. They offer fast, round-the-clock, borderless settlement and can be embedded directly into treasury workflows, streamlining everything from vendor payments to digital revenue sharing. Standard Chartered, for example, is working with Animoca Brands to explore stablecoin-based monetisation and digital ecosystem applications in Hong Kong. Stablecoins are already enabling early adopters to achieve 24 by 7 settlement by eliminating delays caused by traditional banking cut-offs and non-business day processing.

Tokenised deposits, by contrast, are issued by regulated banks and are designed to integrate directly with programmable financial infrastructure, offering higher levels of compliance, control, and institutional trust. They are well suited for managing liquidity on-chain and automating intercompany settlements in a way that meets regulatory standards and preserves access to central bank-backed funds. Initiatives such as the Regulated Liability Network (RLN) demonstrate how commercial bank money can operate on shared ledger infrastructure. These frameworks combine the programmability and speed of digital assets with the trust and compliance of traditional banking, enabling real-time, interoperable settlement across participants. Initiatives like Partior enable the movement of funds through the existing set of corporate treasury bank relationships.

Another development drawing renewed attention is the potential role of central bank digital currencies (CBDCs). While still in early phases, CBDCs could eventually support real-time, programmable liquidity and enhanced cross-border settlement—particularly in wholesale applications. Their adoption path, and interoperability with private digital money and other CBDCs will have a considerable influence on money movement and liquidity management within treasury.  

Smart contracts, meanwhile, are already bringing automation directly into treasury flows. myZoi, a fintech focused on financial inclusion and wage distribution for underbanked migrant workers in the Middle East, recently implemented a smart contract model that authorises prepaid card transactions in real time. Each transaction automatically validates the available balance and earmarks funds in escrow, ensuring settlement certainty and removing the need for bank guarantees or excess collateral. This reduces the operational burden on myZoi and its corporate partners, making it easier and more cost-effective to extend prepaid financial services to underbanked customers.

03

Adaptive infrastructure and risk readiness

As treasury evolves towards a Web3-enabled future, the financial infrastructure underpinning it must become more intelligent, interoperable, and resilient. Key enablers include artificial intelligence, API-driven connectivity, enhanced data standards, and secure integration with decentralised platforms. Together, this will form the backbone of an adaptive infrastructure that equips treasurers to operate with greater speed and confidence in an increasingly complex environment.

AI and advanced analytics are fast becoming core to modern treasury, powering decisions in an environment where value moves in real time. As Web3 takes shape, these technologies help treasurers process and act on vast datasets. From forecasting and scenario analysis to fraud detection and liquidity optimisation, treasurers can rely on platforms like Standard Chartered’s Straight2Bank (S2B) for analytical tools to enhance decision-making – further supported by richer data formats introduced through ISO20022. S2B, in addition, will increasingly allow the Bank’s clients to access stablecoins and transfer value across borders in real time.

APIs are increasingly connecting treasury systems directly to banks, platforms, and ERPs, enabling seamless data flow and automation. In the Web3 context, they serve as critical orchestrators, bridging decentralised infrastructure with enterprise systems. By allowing systems to plug in and scale easily, they are key to building the adaptive infrastructure that treasury teams need to respond to change in real time. Open Banking Marketplaces exemplify this capability, offering hundreds of plug-and-play API solutions for real-time FX execution, intra-day cash visibility, and instant payments. For treasurers, this means faster integration with banking partners, reduced reliance on middleware, and the ability to automate workflows across multiple markets and entities, which lays the groundwork for more composable and automated treasury operations.

As Web3 tools intersect with traditional finance, treasurers must also manage evolving requirements around KYC/AML, tax obligations, and jurisdictional licensing. Partnering with institutions that offer global reach and deep regulatory insight will be essential to scaling safely. Standard Chartered’s guides to payments regulation and cash and liquidity management, are examples of resources helping corporates stay ahead of compliance expectations while embracing innovation.

At the same time, new technologies bring new risks from smart contract exploits to operational vulnerabilities in decentralised systems. Strong governance and resilient architecture will continue to be critical in any modernisation program.