Trade and supply chain finance is widely regarded as one of the most complex areas of transaction banking to digitalise. Despite multiple high-profile blockchain consortia and platforms launched over the past decade, many have struggled to move beyond pilot stage or achieve scale. At the same time, regulators in major trade corridors are imposing stricter anti-money laundering (AML) requirements and tougher anti-fraud measures. Against this backdrop at Sibos Frankfurt 2025, Winnie Chen, head of global payment solutions for Asia Pacific at Bank of America, set out why many initiatives falter and how the bank is addressing corporate treasurers’ demands for seamless digital platforms. Overcoming frictions in trade and supply chain finance Chen said that several digital trade and supply chain finance programmes have been “unsuccessful” because of three main barriers: interoperability issues between systems, high entry barrier due to the need for participants to adopt a common data standard, and inconsistent laws and regulations across counterpart countries. These constraints make it difficult for counterparties to apply digitalisation across documentation and workflows. They also complicate compliance with AML and anti-fraud rules, which are becoming more stringent in Asia Pacific and globally. Her remarks echoed a theme running through Sibos: technology alone cannot solve fragmentation without legal and regulatory harmonisation. Corporate treasurers demand mobile and data-driven platforms Beyond overcoming these structural issues, Chen stressed that corporate treasurers now expect more than just reliable transaction execution. They want mobility and actionable insights. Treasurers increasingly approve transactions “on the go” through mobile banking apps and expect banks to analyse their day-to-day transaction data to provide decision support. Such analytics, Chen said, help clients “make better decisions” and “improve efficiency and yield enhancement”. This reflects a broader shift in transaction banking from infrastructure to intelligence. Integrating transaction services into client ecosystems Bank of America’s CashPro banking portal “has embedded a lot of different solutions” including SWIFT-based payment tracking, artificial intelligence (AI) and fraud protections . “Through our suite of APIs (application programming interface) we’re helping our clients integrate their enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems into CashPro,” Chen said. Applying AI and machine learning to improve efficiency Chen highlighted that many of Bank of America’s products now incorporate AI and machine learning. Examples include CashPro Chat with Erica, a virtual assistant that provides instant answers to clients’ transaction queries and has cut calls to customer service hotlines by 40%. Another is the “Intelligent Receivables” solution, which has improved reconciliation by over 90%. Cash forecasting tools also help corporate treasurers make better capital flow decisions. These capabilities illustrate how banks are moving from providing basic payment rails to providing insights and automation at scale. Building insights into every transaction For Chen, the future of transaction banking lies in embedding digital solutions, analytics and AI into clients’ day-to-day workflows. By focusing on interoperability, standardisation and regulatory alignment while enhancing platforms like CashPro, Bank of America aims to turn each payment into an insight for corporate treasurers. Her comments highlight a wider industry push to move trade and supply chain finance from slow, paper-heavy processes to seamless, data-driven ecosystems that support treasurers in making more strategic decisions.
