BNY positions itself as the transaction banking partner of choice for financial institutions by combining the reliability of a two-century heritage with the agility of a modern technology provider.
The US bank demonstrated leadership in the review period across payments, liquidity and trade services, becoming an indispensable enabler of financial institutions globally. For these clients, BNY’s strength lies not just in the scale of its network but in the sophistication of its products – designed to move money instantly, manage liquidity in real time and digitise trade flows across borders.
In 2024, the bank completed a full-scale migration of its payments business onto a new Payments Enablement platform, providing a foundation for 24/7, multi-currency access and end-to-end automation. The platform integrates wire, automated clearing house (ACH), and immediate payments, unifying these into a single processing environment that reduces cost and operational complexity for client banks.
For financial institutions, the upgrade means faster, safer and more transparent settlement across all payment types. Embedded fraud controls and API-enabled self-service tools allow clients to validate accounts, monitor transactions in real time, and configure payment routing autonomously – a step-change from the traditional correspondent model.
BNY also played a leading role in the global transition to ISO 20022, building a one-stop resource hub for the industry and working alongside Swift on its Case Management initiative, now set to become the standard for interbank investigations. Through these efforts, BNY continues to set the operational and technical benchmark for correspondent banking.
The bank supports nearly all of the world’s top 100 banks, with its excellence also recognised in the Euromoney Financial Institutions Survey, in which participants voted BNY as the number one USD provider in 2025.
Global network for FIs
Financial institutions increasingly need to operate on a continuous basis across time zones and currencies. BNY responded with real-time treasury, an always-on capability that enables clients to send and receive high-value USD payments 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
BNY’s global network has long been a critical utility for other banks. Its partnerships have extended the reach of its payment rails into new markets – most notably in its collaboration with Commonwealth Bank of Australia, which enables near real-time cross-border payments via Australia’s New Payments Platform. Through this integration, BNY’s clients can send USD payments to beneficiaries in Australia within 60 seconds, with full transparency and cost visibility.
This approach also underpins its agreement with Mizuho Bank, which provides for mutual access to each bank’s trade network and simplifies compliance for their institutional clients.
What distinguishes BNY’s transaction banking franchise for financial institutions is its ability to combine innovation with safety at scale
As banks modernise their own client offerings, BNY – under Joon Kim, global head of cash and trade platform for treasury services – has created a virtual infrastructure that supports both its direct clients and their downstream corporates. Its Virtual Account-Based Solutions (VABS) suite allows financial institutions to set up virtual subaccounts for their customers, linking these directly to their BNY nostro accounts. This structure lets non-US banks offer local ACH and wire capabilities to their own clients without opening physical accounts, while maintaining full transparency and control over balances.
For banks, VABS improves reconciliation, enables automated pooling and liquidity transfers, and provides real-time reporting at the virtual account level. The product is now integral to BNY’s institutional cash management strategy.
Trade finance connectivity and outsourcing
BNY remains one of the few global banks offering end-to-end trade outsourcing services to financial institutions. With eight trade centres worldwide, it provides processing and advisory support for letters of credit, collections and guarantees. Its Trade Network Access Service gives banks on-demand access to BNY’s extensive Swift RMA relationships, allowing them to process transactions with counterparties where no direct connection exists.
For regional and mid-sized banks, this model removes the cost and complexity of maintaining large compliance networks while keeping customer relationships intact. The recently announced Mizuho collaboration builds on this capability, combining two trade networks to deliver broader reach without infrastructure investment. Euromoney has named this the world’s best financial institutions deal.
In 2024, BNY also advanced digitisation in open account trade through its partnership with Kanexa, automating invoice approvals and reconciliation to reduce errors and enhance speed.
Harnessing AI to reshape institutional transaction banking
Artificial intelligence has become a defining feature of BNY’s transformation. Its enterprise platform, Eliza, provides a secure environment for developing and deploying AI use cases across the organisation. In Treasury Services, a number of AI-enabled solutions are now in production – improving payment routing, anomaly detection, fraud prevention and client service.
Among these, the payment repair automation engine stands out: by learning from historical Swift message data, it automatically applies corrective rules to recurring errors, reducing manual intervention and accelerating settlement. BNY has also joined Swift’s AI and machine learning consortium to help design the next generation of fraud detection models through federated data analysis – evidence of its collaborative role in shaping global standards.
What distinguishes BNY’s transaction banking franchise for financial institutions is its ability to combine innovation with safety at scale. It operates one of the industry’s most resilient infrastructures, underpinned by rigorous regulatory engagement and cyber-risk controls. Its leadership in real-time payments, AI-enabled operations and digital trade solutions reflects a clear strategic commitment: to help the world’s financial institutions move value faster, more securely and with greater intelligence.
By modernising the systems that underpin global liquidity, BNY has reinforced its role as a cornerstone of the financial ecosystem – the trusted partner that other banks depend on to make money work for the world.
