HSBC wins the award for western Europe’s best bank for transaction services thanks to the delivery of an impressive range of services to corporate treasurers that the bank has developed over years of heavy investment.
The bank is becoming a key provider of the robust digital infrastructure required to make the dream of instant payments across the region a reality.
“For us, it is about delivering choice to treasurers and also about enabling use cases where making treasury real time is truly value added,” says Peter Crawley, European head of global payments solutions at HSBC.
“There are currently market limitations in delivering a truly instant experience. If you look at the EBA [European Banking Authority] data on SEPA [Single Euro Payments Area] only 16% of payments go across instants rails and one in 10 gets rejected,” he explains. “We can export invaluable experience to Europe from the UK where we know how open banking works and see the art of the possible in instant payments.”
HSBC can provide its customers with direct access to all major European clearing systems throughout the 18 markets in which it operates. This includes access to 36 countries and territories through SEPA from 13 account locations. By using the bank’s global disbursements proposition, clients can pay like a local in 130 currencies from a single local currency account in France, Ireland, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Spain or the UK. Treasurers can rationalize account structures using virtual accounts.
“Corporations continue on the journey to centralized treasury,” says Crawley. “They have invested in enterprise resource planning and treasury management systems, and they want to see greater efficiency from streamlining payments and collections after spending all that money.”
In 2023, HSBC introduced Omni Collect in the UK. This allows companies to offer multiple payments options to their customers across cards, bank transfers, real time payments and e-wallets. A simplified set up process quickly allows companies to receive collections consolidated into one central account.
“It may be hard to change customers’ preferences, for example in the UK where they are wedded to debit cards,” says Crawley. “But payment ecosystems are moving to wallets and QR codes and Omni Collect allows multiple options. And it’s not just about bells and whistles. Resiliency is essential in payments. In just a few months, companies will be looking to process payments within seconds and that requires building in bank validation and fraud protection. That’s where the scale advantages of a bank our size that has demonstrated resiliency in challenging times come in.”
HSBC can provide its customers with direct access to all major European clearing systems throughout the 18 markets in which it operates
Peter Crawley
HSBC launched corporate treasury application programming interfaces (APIs), allowing treasurers to make payments from their own workstations without logging into a proprietary bank platform. Clients receive confirmation that a payment request has been received and can then track payments from their accounts to the beneficiary – maintaining full visibility over transactions.
Clients can also use HSBC treasury APIs to check account balances and payments in real time. This avoids reliance on reports and statements and allows treasurers to make dynamic cash management decisions.
And HSBC can help clients make the most of their own data. “In every client survey we do, cash flow forecasting comes up as the number one challenge for corporate treasurers,” says Crawley.
Clients can now optimize their excess cash using HSBC’s global liquidity engine, with a cash concentration structure that then allows automated reverse sweeps to offset credit and debit positions and remove the need for intercompany loans.
And HSBC is moving beyond product and service offering into advisory. “We have set up a treasury solutions group that, in a consultative capacity, can provide insights to clients into what we see as leading practices to digitize and transform treasury, in the context of their sector and business model.”
