The end of end-of-day treasury: preparing for a world of continuous liquidity management

The always-on ecosystem is redefining end-of-day treasury.

The shift toward an always-on, 24/7/365 financial ecosystem is accelerating the pace of change across technology and market infrastructure. It will soon be possible to buy and sell securities, execute trade finance, and manage risk continuously, every single day. This shift in liquidity management requires more than a simple upgrade — it calls for a major transformation to keep pace with developments.

As payments and settlement shift to real time, liquidity can move at any hour of the day, across weekends and holidays as well as outside of traditional business hours. This is creating new demands on treasury functions, increasing timing risk, raising the cost of idle cash and necessitating faster decision-making.

At the same time, advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and agentic AI are raising both expectations and capabilities around automation, responsiveness and intelligent execution, further accelerating the move away from traditional treasury operating models.

While treasury teams do not need to transition overnight, there are clear benefits to beginning to build the foundations for intraday forecasting today. Doing so will help organizations engage with emerging 24/7/365 trends as they develop, ensuring they are well positioned to optimize liquidity, manage risk and capture new opportunities. 

The limits of legacy end-of-day treasury

Historically, treasury management has revolved around highly structured daily processes because payments moved via checks, Automated Clearing House (ACH) and other batch-based systems. Liquidity management was therefore designed around predictable settlement windows, cut-off times and end-of-day optimization.

In a typical cycle, securities would settle in the morning, payroll and supplier payments would be made throughout the day, and excess cash would be swept between accounts to cover shortfalls or maximize investment opportunities. Historically, treasury teams have sought to reach a defined position by the end of each business day: collections accounts at zero, payables accounts funded, investments maximized and overdrafts minimized.

This model endured for decades, even across large multinational organizations involving multiple entities, currencies and jurisdictions. While the complexity varied, the underlying philosophy remained the same because payment systems operated within fixed business-day cycles. So, treasury teams focused primarily on end-of-day positions rather than continuous intraday visibility.

These models have now begun to change — and in a world where money can move at any time, treasurers require greater visibility into liquidity positions and flows throughout the day. In response, intraday forecasting is quickly becoming a foundational treasury capability, enabling organizations to anticipate liquidity needs, optimize funding and investment decisions, and maintain control as cash positions evolve in real time.

Intraday liquidity management: from best practice to business imperative

There are many factors driving the need for intraday forecasting. The most significant is the gradual extension of operating hours across both payments and capital markets, increasing the need for firms to monitor, forecast and mobilize liquidity throughout the day.

This shift creates new timing risks and operational challenges for treasury teams. Even those organizations still operating on traditional infrastructure may receive or send funds outside normal treasury operating hours because real-time payment rails continue functioning across weekends and holidays.

For example, a company receiving funds over the weekend might find that liquidity remains idle until Monday morning if there are no automated liquidity structures or rules. Similarly, unexpected intraday payment activity could create funding gaps, overdraft requirements or operational challenges if positions are not continuously monitored. Beyond the direct cost of intraday overdrafts, insufficient liquidity could result in delayed or failed payments, potentially disrupting suppliers, customers and broader supply-chain activity.

At the same time, regulators and central banks are placing greater emphasis on intraday liquidity management — incentivizing banks to manage balance-sheet resources more efficiently and, in some cases, pass associated costs through to clients.

What continuous treasury operations require

In practice, however, the transition to continuous liquidity management is complicated and requires more than just access to faster payment rails. Treasury management systems (TMS), enterprise resource planning (ERP) platforms and liquidity structures must evolve to provide greater real-time visibility and automation.

Deepening the challenge is the fact that organizations do not want treasury operations staffed continuously outside of normal business hours. This means that application programming interfaces (APIs), automated sweeps and rule-based liquidity structures are becoming essential banking capabilities.

The next logical extension of this trend is agentic AI, where AI-powered agents analyze information, make intelligent decisions and act autonomously, helping organizations manage growing complexity without requiring round-the-clock human oversight.

As treasury operations become more automated, new forms of digital money and financial infrastructure could extend these capabilities even further. For example, tokenized deposits, smart contracts and digital payment infrastructure might enable more programmable approaches to treasury and liquidity management.

But these changes won’t all happen at once. Traditional models, 24/7/365 environments and emerging digital asset infrastructures will coexist for an extended period — reflecting the different speeds at which organizations modernize. Treasury operating models will therefore become more hybrid, requiring firms to manage liquidity, payments and risk seamlessly across multiple environments. Interoperability will, in turn, become pivotal.

The challenge for financial institutions thus extends beyond enabling faster payments to helping clients operate across multiple liquidity environments with a unified view of cash, risk and funding. This requires interoperable infrastructure that connects traditional treasury models with real-time payment rails and emerging digital capabilities.

BNY’s approach acknowledges this need: supporting traditional treasury operating models while also building technology that can support real-time payments, intraday liquidity management, and tokenized payment capabilities, while also remaining connected to existing infrastructure. The objective is not to force a shift to a single model, but to help clients navigate change with greater flexibility, visibility and continuity.

Intraday forecasting: from reporting tool to strategic imperative

Intraday forecasting is quickly moving from a “nice to have” reporting tool to a core treasury capability. While many treasury operating models remain built around end-of-day processes today, the forces driving change are only beginning to emerge. The continued expansion of always-on financial infrastructure, advances in agentic AI and the development of tokenized forms of money are all expected to increase the pace at which liquidity moves through the financial system in the coming years.

The implication is not immediate revolution, but gradual evolution. The priority for treasury teams is to begin building the foundations that will enable them to adapt alongside these developments as they materialize.

The benefits of such an approach are clear: organizations that can forecast cash positions more accurately, automate liquidity movements and optimize funding decisions may be able to reduce idle balances, lower funding costs and operate with smaller liquidity buffers. Firms that begin developing these capabilities today will not only begin to unlock these advantages, but will also be better positioned to capture the opportunities created by a more connected, always-on financial ecosystem.

Read more about the rapid shift underpinning the move to intraday forecasting in BNY’s new e-book, Payments Without Pause: The Journey to a 24/7/365 Treasury and Working Capital Ecosystem