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Cobase is a fintech company specialised in corporate banking solutions. Its platform consolidates multi-bank connectivity, streamlining payment management and treasury operations through a single interface. Cobase connects with over 15,000 banks globally using technologies like SWIFT and APIs. Cobase’s offerings include payment hubs, cash forecasting, and advanced treasury tools, all aimed at reducing complexity and enhancing efficiency for businesses.

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Bank Connectivity: The long failure to standardise banking

This article is written by Cobase

For an industry built on numbers, banking has always struggled with something more basic: speaking the same language.

Ask any treasury team trying to connect to banks globally and you’ll hear a familiar frustration. The expectation is simple – money is digital, banks are global, so connectivity should be straightforward. In reality, it rarely is. What looks like a plumbing issue is something deeper: a system that was never designed to be unified in the first place.

Modern banking didn’t emerge as a coordinated network. It grew in fragments. National systems were built to serve domestic economies, shaped by local regulation, infrastructure, and political priorities. Payment schemes evolved independently. Messaging formats were defined in isolation. Even basic concepts like how to confirm a payment or report a balance took different forms depending on where you looked.

The result is not just variation, but incompatibility.

SWIFT is often held up as the closest thing to a global standard. And in one sense, it is. It created a common messaging layer that banks across the world could use. But it never standardised what happens after the message is sent. Two banks can receive the same SWIFT instruction and process it in entirely different ways – different cut-off times, different validations, different interpretations.

This is where the idea of “bank connectivity” begins to unravel. The challenge is not just reaching a bank, but dealing with how each bank behaves once you do.

Over the years, the industry has made repeated attempts to smooth this out. None have fully succeeded. Not because the technology wasn’t good enough, but because the incentives never aligned. Banks compete. Regulators don’t coordinate globally. And legacy systems – often decades old – continue to run critical infrastructure that no one is willing to replace lightly.

The expectation of a unified system persists. But it’s built on a false premise.

Banking isn’t fragmented because something went wrong. It’s fragmented because that’s how it was built.

The API promise, and its limits

Few ideas in banking have generated as much optimism in recent years as APIs.

They arrived with the promise of simplicity. Clean, modern interfaces. Real-time data. Standardised access. Compared to the heavy, file-based integrations of the past, APIs looked like a reset moment, a chance to finally make bank connectivity behave like the rest of the digital world.

And in some ways, they delivered.

Large banks began exposing endpoints for payments and reporting. Developers could interact with bank systems without navigating layers of legacy protocols. In controlled environments, things worked exactly as advertised.

But step outside those environments, and the picture changes.

APIs in banking are not a single standard. They are dozens, sometimes hundreds, of individual implementations. Each bank defines its own structure, its own authentication methods, its own limits. Even when two banks claim to follow the same framework, the differences show up quickly – in edge cases, in error handling, in performance under load.

The regulatory push behind open banking added momentum, but also confusion. PSD2 created a baseline, but it was never designed for corporate treasury. It focused on retail use cases, with limited scope for bulk payments, complex approval flows, or multi-entity structures. For large organisations, it solved a small part of a much bigger problem.

Meanwhile, neo-banks and aggregators entered the picture, offering simplified access and faster onboarding. They improved the experience at the edges, particularly for account opening and basic transactions. But they didn’t remove the need to engage with traditional banks. In many cases, they simply added another layer to manage.

The result is a familiar pattern in financial infrastructure. New technology doesn’t replace the old – it accumulates around it.

APIs didn’t eliminate fragmentation. They made it more dynamic.

Inside the hidden work of making banks “just work”

From the outside, bank connectivity looks deceptively simple. Payments go out, balances come in, and everything appears to move through a single system.

What’s less visible is the machinery underneath.

For companies operating across multiple countries, connectivity is not one connection, it’s dozens. Each bank brings its own requirements. File formats differ. Security models vary. Some require certificates, others tokens. One bank processes payments in batches, another in real time. Cut-off times shift by region, sometimes by product.

Even within the same bank, behaviour can change depending on the channel used. An API might support one set of payment types, while host-to-host supports another. Documentation doesn’t always reflect reality. Test environments behave differently from production. Exceptions are handled inconsistently.

None of this is unusual. It’s the normal state of the system.

This is why, despite all the talk of innovation, older methods remain firmly in place. Host-to-host connectivity – direct, file-based integration – continues to handle a large share of corporate payments. It’s not elegant, but it’s predictable. It does what it’s supposed to do, at scale, without surprises.

In certain markets, local standards dominate. EBICS, for example, is deeply embedded in parts of Europe. It works not because it’s globally relevant, but because it reflects the specific needs of those markets. In those contexts, it often outperforms more “modern” approaches simply by being consistent.

And then there’s SWIFT, still acting as the global fallback. When no direct connection is available, SWIFT is usually there. Not perfect, not always efficient, but broadly accepted.

Put all of this together, and a pattern emerges. There is no single best way to connect to banks. There is only a set of trade-offs.

The real work is not choosing one method, but managing all of them at once, and making them behave as if they were one.

That work increasingly sits in a layer most corporates never set out to build, but inevitably do: an orchestration layer that absorbs differences between banks, channels, and formats, and presents something coherent on top.

This is where platforms like Cobase operate.

Rather than trying to standardise banks themselves, Cobase standardises the interaction with them. It connects across SWIFT, EBICS, APIs, and host-to-host channels, translating between formats, normalising data, and embedding bank-specific behaviour into a central system. A payment instruction created once can be converted automatically into whatever each bank requires. Data coming back – balances, statuses, confirmations – is aligned into a consistent structure.

The complexity doesn’t disappear. It is relocated.

Instead of sitting in day-to-day treasury operations spread across teams, spreadsheets, and manual fixes, it is contained within a controlled layer designed to handle it.

Because in the end, the hardest part of bank connectivity is not building connections.

It’s making them invisible.

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Bank Connectivity: The long failure to standardise banking-Treasury Masterminds

Perfecting the art of Bank Connectivity

This article is written by Cobase

From the outside, bank connectivity often looks like a solved problem. Connect to banks, move data, initiate payments. In practice, it remains one of the most persistent operational challenges in treasury. 

What looks simple on the surface – “just connect to banks globally” – often becomes complicated as soon as organizations operate across countries, currencies, and banking partners. As Robin Wortelboer, Integration Consultant, at Cobase, notes, the core reason is structural: “There is no single connectivity standard that works everywhere, for every bank, and for every use case.”

This is precisely why specialist connectivity providers exist. Achieving reliable, scalable global coverage is not about choosing one technology per se, but about mastering many of them, and knowing when to use which. “A vendor like us exists because full coverage requires understanding all connectivity flavours,” Wortelboer explains. “Most solutions in the market cover only a subset.” 

Lower barriers do not remove fragmentation 

Among those solutions, there is no shortage of developments that appear to lower the barrier to bank connectivity. API aggregators exist, but many are rooted in PSD2, retail banking models, or limited regional coverage. They can be effective within those constraints, but they rarely meet the needs of large, multi-entity organisations operating across jurisdictions.

Neo-banks can help corporates open accounts in markets that are otherwise difficult to access. However, as Wortelboer points out: “They don’t solve enterprise-grade payment orchestration or deep bank integration. They certainly are useful in specific scenarios, however they do not replace the need for robust connectivity into the traditional banking system. From a connectivity perspective they add another party to connect to for corporates.”

Bank APIs themselves are improving. Large banks are expanding API scope beyond basic payment initiation, moving past regulatory pilots towards more functional offerings.  

But coverage and maturity still vary significantly by bank, by country, and by product. Technical standards differ, typically the API does not cover all relevant services the bank has to offer, documentation quality is inconsistent, and behavior in live environments is far from uniform.

Global banks offer multi-banking services, but most have been limited in reach and functionality (e.g. these typically rely on Swift MT messaging). This is effective for balance reporting and cash visibility, yet, as Wortelboer puts it, “it has limited transactional scope – useful for visibility, not for full operational control”.

ERPs sometimes provide native multi-bank connectivity, but in practice this almost always requires a specialized implementation partner. Even then, it does not remove the underlying fragmentation. Each bank still behaves differently, and those differences still need to be managed. The result is not a lack of options (quite the opposite), but a lack of complete coverage. 

Connectivity is inherently hybrid 

In practice, full global coverage requires a broad and deliberately hybrid connectivity stack.

“APIs should be used where they make sense,” says Wortelboer. Where banks offer mature APIs with sufficient scope, they can provide speed and flexibility. However, the technical variation between banks remains high. “Leveraging existing integrations, experience, and scale materially reduces complexity and implementation risk. Corporates will need to bridge a substantial period of hybrid connectivity supporting legacy and API integrations”.

Host-to-host connectivity remains the backbone of corporate-to-bank interaction for bulk payments. It is widely adopted, technically straightforward, and built on proven operational processes. That combination makes it fast to implement and highly reliable – particularly for high-volume, business-critical payment flows. “For bulk payments, host-to-host is still the workhorse,” Wortelboer notes.

Country-specific standards still matter, and often more than global approaches assume. Electronic Banking Internet Communication Standard (EBICS) in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and France is a prime example. Its structured framework and strong bank adoption enable stable, predictable implementations. In these markets, EBICS often outperforms more generic connectivity approaches precisely because it reflects local banking reality. 

Swift remains essential for global reach. Most banks worldwide support some form of Swift connectivity, making it the practical default where APIs or host-to-host connections are unavailable or impractical. As a Swift member, Cobase’s own bank identifier code (BIC) enables clients to connect in markets where they have limited local presence or cannot rely on the footprint of their global banks.

Swift Business Connect, which allows clients to efficiently set up their own SWIFT BIC, supported by a 3rd party, adds another layer for specific use cases. “It’s not for everyone,” Wortelboer explains, “but for clients where owning a BIC makes sense and direct Swift onboarding is too complex, we can act as a Business Connect Provider.” This enables faster onboarding or migration to Swift Alliance Cloud while keeping alternative connectivity options available, so clients can choose the most cost-effective set-up per bank and per country. 

Orchestration makes connectivity usable 

Connectivity methods on their own do not solve treasury problems, however. The real challenge is running them as a coherent operating model without the corporate having to build a separate organization for this purpose.

A mature set-up combines direct APIs where available, host-to-host connections for scale and reliability, country standards where they dominate, and Swift where global reach is required. But without orchestration on top, this quickly becomes another form of fragmentation. 

There is no single connectivity standard that works everywhere, for every bank, and for every use case.

Robin Wortelboer

Integration Consultant at Cobase

“That orchestration layer is critical,” stresses Wortelboer. It standardizes workflows, data structures, approval structures, security controls, and monitoring across all connectivity types. Treasury teams interact with a single operating environment, even when the underlying connections differ bank by bank and country by country.

This is where Cobase goes beyond pure aggregators or connectivity-only providers. By combining hybrid connectivity with treasury and payment hub capabilities, the platform turns multiple connectivity channels into a single, controlled operating layer. 

An invisible support 

Among all the connectivity complexities, Wortelboer concludes: “A mature global banking set-up requires a hybrid strategy – direct APIs where possible, host-to-host, EBICS, or Swift where required – plus orchestration on top.”

Connectivity done well is rarely visible, he adds. Instead, it shows up as fewer workarounds, fewer exceptions, and fewer surprises at the end of the day. That is the difference between partial connectivity and connectivity that actually supports how treasury operates.

Recognising Cobase as the winner of TMI’s Best Bank Connectivity Award 2026, acknowledges this reality. Not that bank connectivity can be simplified away – but that, with the right support, it can be handled properly, at scale, and in a way that works in practice. 

Also Read

Join our Treasury Community

Treasury Masterminds is a community of professionals working in treasury management or those interested in learning more about various topics related to treasury management, including cash management, foreign exchange management, and payments. To register and connect with Treasury professionals, click the button below.

Register here
-Treasury Masterminds

Treasury is where risk meets opportunity: Vincent’s perspective

This article is written by Cobase

Treasury carries a particular kind of responsibility. It sits at the point where financial stability, risk awareness, and future ambition come together. Cash must be available when the business needs it. Risks must be understood before they escalate. Decisions have to support today’s operations while leaving room for tomorrow’s growth. This balance is not theoretical or abstract. It plays out every day, often under time pressure and with consequences that are felt immediately across the organization.

For Vincent Van Poeke, treasury became the place where this balance felt natural. Not because he planned a career in treasury from the start, but because his professional path gradually pulled him toward work that combines liquidity, analysis, and strategic thinking. Over time, treasury brought those elements together in a way that made sense. It did not change what Vincent was responsible for, but it gave those responsibilities clearer direction and purpose.

Treasury before specialization

Before treasury became the core of his work, Vincent built experience across different areas of finance. He started as a financial expert with the Belgian government, then moved into banking as a financial advisor and corporate analyst. These roles were not labelled as treasury, but they consistently touched its edges.

In banking, he worked closely with treasury teams and saw how their decisions influenced funding structures, liquidity buffers, and risk exposure. This proximity gave him perspective. Treasury was not just about execution. It was about positioning the business to withstand pressure and seize opportunity.

What stood out was how central treasury was, even when it operated quietly.

Why treasury often appears later

Treasury is rarely visible at the beginning of a finance career. University programs and early roles tend to focus on areas like accounting, audit, corporate finance, or investment analysis. These paths are clearly defined, easy to explain, and well represented in academic settings. Treasury, by contrast, often sits behind the scenes, quietly connecting those functions without drawing much attention to itself.

Vincent’s experience reflects this reality. Treasury did not appear as a clear destination early in his career. Instead, it revealed itself gradually through exposure and relevance. As he moved closer to real business decisions, dealing with cash flows, funding structures, and financial risk, treasury became more visible. It was the point where analysis stopped being theoretical and started to have immediate consequences.

This shift did not happen by accident. It happened because treasury proved to be the place where insight could turn into action. Over time, Vincent realized that this was where his skills and interests aligned most naturally. What began as exposure slowly became clarity, and clarity turned into a deliberate choice.

Meeting Vincent Van Poeke

Treasury as daily practice

Today, Vincent works primarily in treasury and financial controlling, with treasury accounting for roughly 80 percent of his daily activity. His work centers on managing cash and liquidity, maintaining bank relationships, making funding decisions, and overseeing financial risk. All of this is approached through a strong analytical lens, with careful attention to how each decision connects to the wider business.

What keeps him engaged is the dynamic nature of the role. Treasury rarely deals with static problems. Conditions change, priorities shift, and decisions need to adapt accordingly. At its core, treasury repeatedly asks the same fundamental question in different forms: how do we protect the company today while keeping it ready for what comes next. That balance between stability and progress is what defines his work and keeps it challenging.

Learning treasury through responsibility

Treasury appealed to Vincent because it operates in the present and the near future. Decisions are rarely abstract or theoretical. They affect liquidity today, funding options tomorrow, and strategic flexibility over time. The impact of a decision is often visible quickly, which adds both responsibility and clarity to the role.

Questions in treasury cannot always wait. Do we have sufficient cash. Where is it located right now. How much risk are we carrying at this moment. What happens if market conditions change. These are not academic exercises that can be debated indefinitely. They demand timely answers and considered action.

By working through these situations, Vincent learned that treasury rewards clear thinking, comfort with uncertainty, and accountability. Perfect information is rarely available, but decisions still need to be made. In treasury, progress comes from making informed choices when timing matters, and taking responsibility for the outcomes that follow.

The learning curve that never flattens

One of the toughest aspects of treasury, especially early in a career, is its sheer breadth. Liquidity, funding, foreign exchange, systems, regulation, and technology all intersect within a single function. Each area comes with its own language, risks, and priorities. For Vincent, this created a steep learning curve that did not disappear with time. Instead, it became a constant feature of the role.

Rather than trying to master everything at once, Vincent learned to approach treasury with a mindset of continuous growth. Curiosity became a practical tool. Staying open to learning, accepting that not knowing everything is part of the job, and asking questions without hesitation all helped him progress. Learning from more experienced professionals was just as important as formal knowledge, because much of treasury insight comes from context and experience.

He also learned the importance of stepping back and looking at the bigger picture. Treasury decisions rarely exist in isolation. A funding choice can influence operational flexibility. A liquidity decision can affect strategic options. Understanding how these pieces connect made the complexity easier to manage. Over time, the learning curve did not flatten, but it became more navigable, shaped by experience rather than overwhelm.

Operational discipline before strategic reach

Vincent views treasury as having two inseparable sides. The operational side keeps the business running. Cash management, payments, and reporting require consistency and precision. These activities build trust.

He deliberately starts with these fundamentals. Once they are in place, he shifts attention to strategic work such as forecasting, risk management, and feasibility analysis. Every decision is tested across short, medium, and long-term horizons.

This structure ensures treasury supports both stability and forward planning.

Visibility as the starting point

Visibility is the foundation of good treasury. Without a clear and centralized view of liquidity, even the most detailed forecasts lose their value. When visibility is fragmented or delayed, forecasting becomes assumption based rather than decision driven, and that weakens confidence across the business.

He approaches forecasting across multiple timeframes, each serving a distinct purpose. Weekly forecasts keep operations running smoothly and ensure obligations are met on time. Monthly and quarterly forecasts help manage risk and anticipate changes in cash flows. Yearly forecasts move treasury into strategic territory, supporting decisions around capital allocation and long term investment. When visibility is strong, these forecasts become practical decision tools rather than static reports that explain the past.

Speed matters in treasury, but only when clarity comes first. Acting quickly without a reliable view of liquidity increases risk instead of reducing it. For Vincent, clarity is what allows speed to be used responsibly.

Technology and changing expectations

Technology is reshaping treasury, and Vincent sees this shift as an opportunity rather than a disruption. Among the developments he finds most promising is predictive analytics. By combining historical data with real time inputs and market trends, predictive tools can improve forecast accuracy and help treasurers deploy cash more effectively without taking on unnecessary liquidity risk.

At the same time, technology is changing what is expected from treasury professionals. Strong financial knowledge remains essential, but it is no longer sufficient on its own. Treasurers now need to understand the systems behind the data, question how information is generated, and interpret outputs with confidence. Data literacy and technical understanding are becoming just as important as traditional financial skills.

Treasury is increasingly about making sense of complex systems, not just reviewing numbers.

Simplifying complexity deliberately

Managing multiple banks, payment flows, and FX exposures adds significant complexity to treasury operations. Left unchecked, that complexity can slow decision making and increase operational risk. Vincent believes this is why multi-bank platforms and Treasury Management Systems are becoming essential tools rather than optional enhancements.

He is also a strong supporter of in-house bank principles. Thanks to technological progress, these models are no longer reserved for large multinationals. Today, organizations of all sizes can adopt the core fundamentals of in-house banking to centralize liquidity, streamline payments, and improve control. For Vincent, simplification is not about reducing ambition. It is about creating structures that allow treasury to operate with clarity and confidence.

Treasury moving closer to strategy

Vincent believes treasury will continue moving closer to the boardroom as the function evolves. As operational tasks become increasingly automated, treasurers are no longer tied down by repetitive execution. This shift creates space for deeper involvement in long-term planning, capital allocation, and strategic decision making.

In Vincent’s view, treasury adds its greatest value when it helps leadership understand what is financially possible. He often returns to one core idea: finance is about translating risk. Treasury plays a central role in connecting ambition to financial reality by assessing liquidity availability, the cost of capital, and the impact decisions have on working capital. Before a strategy becomes a plan, treasury helps test whether it is feasible, sustainable, and aligned with the company’s financial position.

This is where treasury’s strategic value becomes visible. Not through authority or titles, but through insight and clarity. By bringing perspective early into discussions, treasury helps shape decisions rather than simply reacting to them.

Lessons Vincent carries forward

Curiosity, adaptability, and communication have been critical throughout Vincent’s career. Treasury touches many parts of the business, and understanding how those parts fit together matters just as much as understanding the numbers themselves. The treasurers who stand out are those who can explain implications clearly and connect financial analysis to commercial strategy.

Treasury may not be a career many people plan from the beginning. But for those who grow into it, it becomes a role where responsibility, judgment, and impact come together. For Vincent, that combination is what makes treasury both challenging and deeply rewarding.

Conclusion

Vincent’s journey shows that treasury careers are often shaped through exposure and experience rather than intention alone. What begins as proximity to the function gradually turns into understanding, and understanding into commitment. Over time, treasury reveals its depth and relevance, not through titles or labels, but through the impact of its decisions on the business.

Treasury attracts people who are comfortable balancing risk and opportunity, who are willing to take responsibility, and who continue learning as markets, technology, and organizations evolve. As the function becomes more strategic and more visible, its influence grows in a natural way, built on trust and insight rather than authority.

For Vincent, treasury is where analysis becomes action and responsibility leads to meaningful impact. It is the place where his skills, mindset, and curiosity come together. And it is exactly where he wants to be.

Also Read

Join our Treasury Community

Treasury Masterminds is a community of professionals working in treasury management and those interested in learning more about topics such as cash management, foreign exchange management, and payments. To register and connect with Treasury professionals, click [HERE] or fill out the form below to get more information.