Bank of America's global head of payments: China is a huge innovator in payments, and Chinese companies going global have broad prospects

The 2026 SWIFT International Banking Operations Seminar (Sibos) was previously held in Miami, USA. This year's annual meeting centered on "digital finance in an AI-driven economy," with a focus on next-generation payment infrastructure and the role of AI in financial security.

Mark Monaco, head of global payments at Bank of America, who attended the conference, recently made a special trip to China for a visit and gave an exclusive interview to Yicai, discussing his views on future technological development and the complexities that Chinese companies need to address as they expand overseas.

Development and Outlook of the Corporate Payments Industry

Yicai: What are global corporate treasury clients most focused on right now? How do you view the future prospects of the payments industry?

Monaco: First, payments are becoming increasingly real-time and global. The next frontier in payments is actually interoperability—connecting instant payment systems with traditional cross-border infrastructure so that clients can move funds with greater speed, certainty and transparency.

Second, there is no doubt that it is artificial intelligence (AI). At Bank of America, AI is moving from "experimental exploration" to "practical application." The AI features we have launched can already help treasury teams forecast cash flow, reconcile accounts receivable, and turn increasingly rich data into actionable intelligent insights.

Third, given how fast money and information move, many discussions at Sibos showed that trust and resilience matter more than ever. Therefore, security, resilience, governance mechanisms, and the collaboration needed to achieve all of this are crucial—and by collaboration I mean collaboration between banks and between infrastructures.

I believe it is this combination of 7×24 real-time payments, better data, more practical AI, and trust as the underlying foundation that will define the treasury ecosystem in the coming years.

Yicai: Efficient cross-border fund allocation is becoming increasingly important. Compared with the past, what greater practical benefits can some technological innovations now provide to corporate clients?

Monaco: This is by no means only about increasing payment speed; it is more about enhancing certainty and controllability, as well as enabling structured data and more efficient liquidity management.

I believe more and more corporate clients expect cross-border payments to have the same speed and transparency as domestic payments. So for companies, this really means having clear control over when funds arrive and greater control over payment timing.

In addition, there is the liquidity dimension: as payments move to 7×24 around the clock, fund management also becomes 24/7. Therefore, companies must allocate liquidity more precisely and instantly when funds are truly needed, rather than managing around traditional cut-off times. Clients' focus is shifting from "visibility" to "control," and from obtaining data to transmitting it in a timely manner. At the level of the entire group, this means managing hundreds of bank accounts, considering cash, payments and risk exposures as a whole, allocating liquidity efficiently, reducing idle funds, and incorporating foreign exchange and other risks into the same treasury decision-making framework.

China Is a Huge Innovator in Payments

Yicai: Currently, Chinese companies are deeply participating in the global market through overseas expansion. How does Bank of America help Chinese companies specifically address the complex global environment?

Monaco: I believe internationalization makes treasury management more strategic. For Chinese companies or any company with a global business footprint, production may be in one country, suppliers in another, and customers across multiple markets—this quickly generates more accounts, more currencies, payment processes and foreign exchange exposures. In addition, adjustments to procurement, production and inventory strategies also affect the scale of working capital companies need and the markets and regions where liquidity must be allocated.

Therefore, the treasury management response must be flexibility, and it also requires bank infrastructure that can support multiple markets and multiple payment clearing networks. Bank of America has a very large global network, with operations in more than 35 countries and regions, membership in more than 75 global clearing systems, and coverage of markets accounting for about 95% of global GDP, which enables us to support companies on this journey of overseas expansion.

Ultimately, our goal is to help companies clearly control cash globally, allocate cash efficiently, understand related risks, and provide tools to act quickly and safely. We help them address complexity in the process of internationalization and support them in operating with greater resilience and control.

Yicai: Based on this trip to China, what new observations do you have about China's domestic payments market? How will Bank of America cooperate with institutions including Chinese banks in the future to provide better services to Chinese companies going global?

Monaco: First, China has always been a huge innovator in payments. In fact, many of the most important recent payment innovations originated in Asia and China. I still remember that when I first came to China in 2016, I was struck by the development of new payment technologies here.

We maintain very close cooperation with banks in China, both supporting their global operations and working alongside them in the internationalization of many Chinese companies. Bank of America's global network enables us to partner with these companies and banks, thereby improving the efficiency of global treasury management and making global fund flows more efficient.

Yicai: For Chinese companies that are currently expanding or planning to expand overseas business, what preparations do they need to make to build a more efficient and more resilient operating system?

Monaco: I think Chinese companies going global need to combine global consistency with strong local execution, adding banking relationships, setting up legal entities, adding currencies, and dealing with different regulatory requirements and different payment and clearing networks. The top priority must be to simplify this complexity without sacrificing resilience. Right now, tariffs are another element that adds to this complexity. When these factors change in combination, they change the demand for liquidity, bank accounts and different currencies in different regions.

I think companies need four core capabilities: first, global connectivity combined with local market expertise. Although we all want payments to be global, fast and real-time, each market's payment system remains highly local in nature. So being able to combine the two is a unique advantage in the market. Second, integrated visibility and control of liquidity. Third, secure multi-payment network capabilities. Fourth, integrating these capabilities and automating them.

Efficient treasury management is a strategic asset, especially for companies that continue to expand their global operations in an environment full of rapid change and complexity. We help clients navigate this complexity—whether driven by supply chain shifts, by the additional challenges brought by tariffs, or by operating in new jurisdictions or using foreign currencies. By providing them with the ability to operate smoothly and with the corresponding control mechanisms, we help them avoid and mitigate some of these risks.

Monaco: AI's biggest opportunity lies in eliminating repetitive work and helping people make better decisions. As we have discussed in recent years, examples include cash flow forecasting, accounts receivable and record reconciliation, anomaly detection, payment optimization, and extracting insights from massive amounts of treasury data.

Bank of America has already put a number of AI capabilities into practical application: our cash flow forecasting helps 3,000 companies save 250,000 hours of manual work each year; intelligent receivables automatically match payments, remittance information and invoices; virtual assistants provide immediate 24/7 assistance; and data intelligence solutions use clients' own data to provide forward-looking analysis for payments, foreign exchange and capital markets activities. What clients care about is the issue of efficiency.

All of these solutions are provided to clients through Bank of America's digital banking platform CashPro, which is currently used by more than 35,000 companies worldwide, supports 11 languages, and can connect with more than 70 treasury management and enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. Within the CashPro platform, mobile and mobile access are becoming increasingly important. In 2025, clients' settlement volume through the CashPro APP reached a record $1.2 trillion, equivalent to about $38,000 per second, with transaction volume growing at an annualized rate of 20%.

Monaco: Our approach to applying AI must adhere to "human-in-the-loop." These tools must undergo extremely rigorous testing. Ultimately, in treasury management, the demand for accuracy is extremely high, and we must ensure that the relevant processes and decisions are accurate and reliable.

The most important principle here is: AI should provide treasury personnel with better information earlier, and should automate low-value manual repetitive work, thereby creating more time for strategic decision-making. I believe AI's role is to enhance the capabilities of treasury professionals, not to replace them. Its purpose is by no means to replace human judgment, governance or control mechanisms. These three remain at the core of all major financial decisions.

Yicai: How does Bank of America guard against risks such as fraud, erroneous operations, or technology exceeding authorized scope, and ensure that appropriate human oversight and accountability mechanisms are retained at key links? How should financial institutions strike a balance among innovation, efficiency and risk management?

Monaco: Our AI must undergo very rigorous testing. After all, in the treasury and cash management business, 100% accuracy must be achieved. Bank of America is very prudent about the products it launches. Although these tools can bring huge benefits, they also bring a certain degree of risk, and we must mitigate these risks through processes and control mechanisms.

This again comes back to the theme of "resiliency." With the rapid development of AI, the threshold and requirements for maintaining system resilience and security have also risen. These tools can inherently be double-edged swords that are both defensive and offensive. Bank of America invests $14 billion in technology each year—both to develop new tools to help clients improve efficiency and to protect the security of the entire financial ecosystem.