In 2026, treasury’s steady hand at the corporate helm must find a balance more than usual. Treasurers will be tasked with protecting corporate balance sheets and enabling growth, fostering resilience and competitive advantage and delivering more value with fewer resources in an enduringly volatile world.
Rising complexity, compressed margins and growing business demands will continue to push treasury teams to evolve in the year ahead, not only to become strategic partners but to learn and adapt at pace, predicts the research team at HSBC Global Investment Research.
This year, corporates will continue to navigate the aftershocks of trade fragmentation, shifting rate cycles and uneven growth, and tariffs will continue to dominate the economic landscape. While many economies already know the rates their exports will face entering the US, the extension of sector-specific tariffs will keep uncertainty high. Something that poses a dilemma for American companies, unsure of import costs, and for global exporters, who may see weaker US demand, continues HSBC.
Treasury success will depend on agility and insight as much as efficiency, which although daunting, also creates space for treasurers to evolve, using data, automation and payments innovation to drive growth and resilience rather than simply mitigate risk.
Analysis from a J.P. Morgan survey of CFO sentiment in Asia Pacific finds the region’s treasurers are cautious ahead of 2026. A knowledge gap and uncertainty about the regulatory backdrop surrounding digital currencies, plus challenges forecasting liquidity needs in volatile times, are front of mind.
Natasha Condon, Global Head of Trade Sales at J.P. Morgan warns that supply chains will continue to shift rapidly under geopolitical pressure in 2026. She flags that new supply chains are less efficient than the old ones, and therefore come with increased cost, time in transit, and inventory storage burden. In another priority for treasury, AI deepfake fraud will also continue to spiral. Finance teams should expect more fraud attempts aimed personally at treasurers and CFOs, often mimicking the voice or face of their boss, she says.
Treasurers should also expect solidification of stablecoins as a mainstream financial tool in 2026, and faster and more transparent cross-border payments, driven by the ISO 20022 migration.
“Stablecoins are no longer just niche crypto innovation. They have moved to a mainstream financial tool, with real-world use cases including digital commerce, on-chain settlement and cross-border payments. Regulatory frameworks and legislation in the US and Europe, such as the GENIUS Act and MiCA have helped inject legitimacy and structure,” says Laurent Descout, Co-Founder and CEO at cross-border payments fintech Neo.
“In cross-border payments, stablecoins can facilitate near-instantaneous transactions at significantly lower cost, unlike traditional bank transfers, which can take up to five days and involve multiple intermediaries. Over the next year, adoption will move beyond crypto-native users to broader financial flows, embedding stablecoins more deeply into traditional finance.”
This year, ISO 20022 migration will finally unlock the next phase of cross-border payments, he continues. The deadline of November 2025 fired the starting gun on banks and payment service providers ability to finally leverage ISO 20022’s richer data to automate compliance, cut manual processes, and deliver transparent cross-border payments.
“That’s where the industry will see the real return on this investment,” says Descout. “Attention will now shift to the new wave of SWIFT initiatives, from Case Management to SWIFT GO and Pre-validation. They may be less dramatic than the migration itself, but they tackle long-standing issues: friction, opacity and slow resolution times. Together, they will move the industry meaningfully closer to fast, predictable global payments.”
Carl Slabicki, Co-Head of Global Payments for BNY’s Treasury Services argues that with more markets adopting 24/7 settlement frameworks, the next phase will be greater interoperability, clearer standards and coordinated efforts across providers to enable interbank settlement of both fiat and tokenised value.
“We are seeing meaningful progress across banks as they modernise their infrastructures and begin bridging traditional rails with new technologies that support always-on models,” he says.
Finally, despite increasing investments in AI across corporate functions, the latest Gartner Survey finds CFOs lack confidence in their ability to drive enterprise AI impact citing execution risk, talent shortages and uncertainty about how to translate pilots into performance. It found that only 44 % of CFOs feel confident they can accelerate the use of AI in their finance function, highlighting ongoing uncertainty about implementation and utility in core financial processes. Gartner also found CFOs are also concerned about their ability to hire and retain digital talent for finance roles.
