A bank targeting e-commerce clients does not need the same proposition as one financing thousands of suppliers or one managing the cash pools of multinationals. Yet all three need technology that can accommodate their priorities without dictating them. Intellect’s answer is to let banks select the products, client journeys and operating capabilities that fit the businesses they want to build.
That thinking is central to Intellect Design Arena’s second consecutive win as the world’s best transaction banking software provider. Last year’s recognition centred on the breadth of its eMACH.ai architecture. In 2025, the story was how banks began putting that flexibility to work: buying new capabilities, extending established platforms into more countries and serving different corporate segments without creating another disconnected set of systems.
Intellect has also been building an AI foundation designed around the same principle. Rather than introducing a generic assistant on top of banking software, it is developing specialist tools that work within a bank’s own products, policies and processes. The ambition is not to make every bank operate alike, but to make each bank’s strategy easier to execute.
Built around the business, not the product
The distinction begins with how Intellect defines a banking platform. Its transaction banking proposition covers nine service lines and 12 domain packs, with more than 650 ready-to-deploy corporate journeys. That might sound like an extensive product catalogue. Its value, however, lies in allowing a bank to assemble the parts relevant to its customers and expand them as the franchise develops.
The journeys themselves can be tailored. Intellect’s CBX corporate channel gives treasurers, payment makers, approvers and receivables teams different views and workflows. Banks can adapt Intellect’s standard interface, compose their own design or use the underlying experience APIs to develop an interface of their own. Its CoDeXA tools are intended to reduce journey development time by half.
This matters commercially. Banks want to distinguish themselves through the clients they serve and the problems they solve, not merely through the appearance of their digital channels.
One architecture, different growth strategies
Freedom to choose is less valuable if every choice requires another large implementation. Intellect’s eMACH.ai architecture separates business capabilities into components that can be introduced progressively. Its M-AWARE framework accommodates different countries, legal entities, currencies and core systems, while the iTurmeric integration layer connects Intellect’s applications with existing banking and third-party infrastructure.
Intellect reported strong double-digit revenue growth in cash management and liquidity management, while payments also posted a double-digit increase
Banks can therefore modernise the parts of their transaction banking business that matter most without replacing everything underneath. They can also start with one capability and extend the same foundation into others.
Intellect reported strong double-digit revenue growth in cash management and liquidity management, while payments also posted a double-digit increase. New licences and banking clients, including major global institutions, supported that momentum, alongside wider payment rail coverage. Trade finance delivered the sharpest licence revenue growth, while CBX channel revenue also rose substantially.
Choice tested in production
Client deployments demonstrate how Intellect’s platforms accommodate different operating models. For example, for a European bank, its trade finance technology has been extended across additional legal entities while also supporting local requirements. In supply chain finance, clients use multiple financing products to serve broad corporate networks across markets, with scope for further expansion.
Intellect clients report substantial reductions in corporate onboarding time and faster implementation in new markets across client deployments. Exposure control capabilities have also helped reduce overdraft positions and achieve high levels of straight-through payment processing.
Making intelligence configurable, too
Intellect’s next development applies that logic to AI. Its Purple Fabric framework is designed to make AI useful within specific banking workflows, drawing on an Enterprise Knowledge Garden containing institutional policies, product rules and specialist domain knowledge. A governance layer adds auditability, explainability and human oversight, while an optimisation hub allows banks to use different language models.
The applications reflect distinct business priorities. A bank focused on deposits can use an AI expert to model how corporate balances respond to interest rate changes. A trade finance operation can deploy tools to scrutinise documents against letter of credit terms and international standards, review guarantees or identify compliance risks. Supply chain finance teams can draw on specialists for onboarding, invoice extraction, programme participation and early-warning risk monitoring.
The principle is important: the bank chooses where intelligence should enter its operating model, rather than being handed a single AI product and asked to find uses for it. The newest tools do not yet have the same depth of published outcome data as Intellect’s established transaction banking systems. But the underlying investment in domain knowledge and controls gives banks a foundation on which to develop AI without separating it from the systems that execute transactions.
Intellect’s second consecutive award rests on more than breadth. It gives banks room to differentiate and the connected technology to deliver. Growth, wider adoption and operational gains reinforce that case.
Pictured on the results page is Manish Maakan, chief executive officer, wholesale banking
