This article is a contribution from our content partner, Kyriba

Most treasury teams will read the GENIUS Act as the signal they have been waiting for: regulatory uncertainty resolved, stablecoin payments justified.

Seventy-three percent of executives had identified regulatory uncertainty as their top concern about digital asset adoption. Remove that concern, and the assumption is that the path is now clear. The regulatory uncertainty is resolved. Governance readiness is treasury’s to build.

The Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins Act (GENIUS Act), signed into law on July 18, 2025, is the first federal legislation in the United States to establish a licensing and regulatory framework for payment stablecoins. For corporate treasury, its significance is immediate: for the first time, a federal framework governs who can issue payment stablecoins and under what conditions. What the Act means for your operating model is a separate question.

What the GENIUS Act establishes for payment stablecoin issuers

Payment stablecoins are dollar-denominated digital tokens that settle on a blockchain instead of through a bank: one dollar in, one dollar out, designed for payments rather than investment. The GENIUS Act defines who can issue them, under what conditions, and under which federal or state regulator’s oversight.

The proposed rules require issuers to maintain identifiable reserves backing outstanding stablecoins on a 1:1 basis, drawing only from a narrow set of highly liquid assets: U.S. Treasury bills with remaining maturities of 93 days or less, Federal Reserve Bank balances, and demand deposits, among others. Counterparty exposure to any single custodian cannot exceed 40% of total reserves. Monthly reserve reports must be examined by a registered public accounting firm and certified in writing by the CEO and CFO. Documented programs covering internal controls, IT security, AML compliance, and liquidity contingency planning are also required.

These obligations govern the stablecoin issuer. They define what a bank, a fintech such as Circle, or another entity licensed under the GENIUS Act must do to issue stablecoins. They do not govern how your treasury team authorizes a payment instruction, builds an evidence chain from invoice to settlement, or handles an exception outside business hours.

The governance question the GENIUS Act does not answer

When a USDC (USD Coin) payment instruction leaves your ERP and enters a stablecoin rail, the issuer’s 1:1 reserve requirement does not tell you who in your organization approved the payment, whether the approval complied with your delegation-of-authority policy, or how to reconcile a blockchain transaction hash back to the invoice in your TMS.

Consider a straightforward scenario: a $1 million USDC payment routes to a supplier cross-border on a Friday afternoon. The ERP shows approval. The wallet dashboard shows a transaction hash. Settlement should take minutes. It does not settle. The supplier reports no receipt. Your bank does not handle stablecoin inquiries, and your wallet provider’s support queue is not monitored over the weekend. No one on your treasury team has documented what to do next, who holds access to the custody provider’s admin console, or whether the fallback is to re-execute on a traditional rail and, if so, how to avoid a dual-settlement outcome: a situation where a stuck on-chain payment eventually clears after a traditional-rail replacement has already executed, paying the same supplier twice.

That scenario is not a stablecoin failure. The stablecoin issuer met every obligation the GENIUS Act imposes: the USDC was fully backed, the on-chain transaction was recorded. The stablecoin performed as designed. The treasury operating model did not. No escalation path. No evidence chain connecting the ERP approval to the on-chain settlement confirmation. No pre-defined fallback with a documented decision rule.

The GENIUS Act’s issuer governance requirements are necessary. They do not prevent that scenario. Treasury governance does.

What operational readiness requires

The GENIUS Act answers what regulators require of the issuer. It does not answer what treasury requires of itself. Operational readiness for stablecoin payments, in practice, means three things: authorization, evidence, and fallback.

Authorization and approval. Who can instruct a stablecoin payment, at what limits, and through which workflow in your ERP or TMS? Segregation of duties that applies to a wire instruction must be mapped explicitly to a wallet-based payment instruction. If your treasury holds private key access to a custody wallet, treat that access with the same controls you apply to any other payment authorization. Private key access is not an IT credential. It is a payment control.

Evidence chain. Under audit, can you produce a complete, tamper-evident record connecting the invoice, the ERP approval, the payment instruction, the on-chain transaction hash, and the settlement confirmation? The GENIUS Act requires issuers to maintain their own records and certifications. Your treasury’s evidence chain is distinct from the issuer’s audit trail. Build it deliberately, from day one, not after the first audit question arrives.

Controlled fallback. If a stablecoin payment fails or delays, what is the pre-authorized path to execute through a traditional rail without re-approving the payment, re-keying data, or creating a dual-settlement risk? If that path is not documented before you go live, it will be improvised under pressure. Improvisation is not a control.

Kyriba’s integration of USDC through a collaboration with Circle is built to place stablecoin execution inside existing treasury workflows: the same approval processes, the same governance controls, the same audit trail infrastructure treasury teams already apply to traditional rails. The regulatory framework makes that integration viable. The governance framework makes it defensible.

The starting gate, not the finish line

The GENIUS Act resolves the legal question. It does not resolve the governance question. Regulatory clarity removes the legal objection. It does not build the approval workflows, evidence chains, or controlled fallbacks your treasury needs before going live on a stablecoin rail.

Outcomes first. Rails second. The GENIUS Act moved stablecoins from the question of “can we?” to the question of “are we ready?” Answer the second question before you execute the first payment.

Read more from Kyriba

• Treasury AI adoption: drive the change or chase it
• AI payment fraud and a shifting threat landscape: why CFOs need proactive payment controls
• Innovative approaches to working capital optimization
• From risk to resilience: why bank connectivity is now a CFO mandate
• Why working capital matters more than ever
• A call to action for banks in the AI age
• The Economics of Liquidity: Why CFOs Must Regularly Monitor and Coordinate with Their Treasurer
• Why your risk management system might be sabotaging your business

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.

This article is a contribution from our content partner, Kyriba

There is a quiet revolution happening inside the world’s most forward-looking finance organizations, and most treasury teams are watching it from the hallway. Artificial intelligence is no longer a pilot program, a buzzword in a vendor deck, or a problem for IT to solve. Treasury AI adoption is actively reshaping how cash is managed, how risk is quantified, and how financial leadership earns its seat at the strategic table.

The question is no longer whether AI will transform treasury. It already is. According to Kyriba’s 2026 CFO Survey, approximately 92% of global CFOs are integrating AI into some of their processes and decision-making. The only question is whether yours will be among those driving that transformation, or scrambling to catch up with those who did.

The real risk is inaction

Let’s be honest about what the hesitation often looks like: concern about data security, skepticism about ROI, uncertainty about where to start, and (perhaps most dangerously) the comfort of the familiar. These are understandable instincts. Treasury has always been a function defined by precision and caution. But those same instincts, left unchecked, become an existential liability when the competitive landscape is moving at the speed of AI adoption.

Consider what’s at stake. While your team manually reconciles bank statements and consolidates cash positions across 40 entities, an AI-enabled competitor is receiving real-time global liquidity intelligence before the market opens. While your analysts are building this week’s FX exposure model in Excel, a peer institution’s system has already flagged a correlated risk in a currency pair you haven’t touched yet. The gap isn’t just operational efficiency; it is strategic foresight. And in treasury, the cost of delayed foresight is measured in basis points, counterparty risk, and missed working capital optimization, sometimes in the tens of millions.

Waiting for AI to be “proven” in treasury is like waiting for the internet to be proven in banking. The proof is already in, and the cost is being paid by those still waiting.

What AI actually delivers: cash flow forecasting, FX risk, and beyond

Strip away the hype and the financial case for treasury AI adoption is concrete and compounding. Cash flow forecasting, historically the most labor-intensive and least accurate function in the treasury toolkit, is being transformed by machine learning models that learn from ERP data, payment patterns, and external signals simultaneously. According to Kyriba customer data, organizations deploying AI forecasting are reporting 30-50% improvements in forecast accuracy, translating directly into lower precautionary cash buffers and higher yield on deployed liquidity.

On the risk side, AI is enabling dynamic FX hedging programs that adjust in near-real-time to exposure changes rather than quarterly rebalancing cycles, a structural advantage in volatile macro environments. For organizations with complex intercompany structures, AI-powered netting and pooling optimization is consistently surfacing working capital improvements that manual treasury operations simply cannot detect at the required speed or granularity.

Treasury teams deploying AI automation in cash positioning, payment processing, and reporting are reclaiming 15-25 hours per analyst per week, time that elite treasury organizations are reinvesting into capital structure strategy, M&A support, and board-level financial risk advisory. That is not incremental improvement. That is a fundamental repositioning of what treasury contributes to the enterprise.

Fear is the most expensive line item on your balance sheet

The AI fears circulating in treasury circles deserve acknowledgment, but not accommodation. Concerns about model explainability are legitimate; the answer is to demand transparency from vendors and build internal AI literacy, not to abstain. Concerns about data security are valid; the answer is rigorous governance frameworks, not a blanket moratorium on adoption. Concerns about job displacement deserve a thoughtful response: treasury teams that adopt AI don’t shrink; they evolve. The analysts who once built cash reports become the strategists who interpret AI-generated intelligence for the CFO and the board.

What is worth examining honestly is whether vague discomfort is masquerading as prudent risk management. Every month a treasury organization delays AI adoption is a month of compounding disadvantage: in forecast quality, in working capital efficiency, in FX risk management, and ultimately in the credibility of finance leadership as a strategic partner to the business.

AI for CFOs and treasurers: lead from the front, or explain why you didn’t

CFOs and treasurers are uniquely positioned to lead enterprise AI adoption, not just within finance, but as a model for the broader organization. Treasury sits at the intersection of data, risk, and strategy. The function already commands the systems, the governance instincts, and the cross-functional relationships needed to deploy AI responsibly and at scale. The organizations that seize this moment will not simply become more efficient treasury departments. They will become the intelligence engines of their enterprises, providing the real-time financial visibility and predictive risk insight that transforms how the C-suite makes decisions.

That is a future worth leaning into. The technology is mature enough to deliver. The business case is clear enough to defend. The only variable that remains is leadership conviction.

Imagine a treasury team that had fully embraced AI in cash forecasting, FX risk, liquidity optimization, and reporting. How much more would they know? How much faster would they move? And how much more would the business trust them with? If the honest answer unsettles you even slightly… what, specifically, is holding you back?

Read more from Kyriba

• What the GENIUS Act doesn’t answer for corporate treasury
• AI payment fraud and a shifting threat landscape: why CFOs need proactive payment controls
• Innovative approaches to working capital optimization
• From risk to resilience: why bank connectivity is now a CFO mandate
• Why working capital matters more than ever
• A call to action for banks in the AI age
• The Economics of Liquidity: Why CFOs Must Regularly Monitor and Coordinate with Their Treasurer
• Why your risk management system might be sabotaging your business

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.

This article is a contribution from our content partner, Kyriba

Treasury teams are managing more fraud vectors than at any point in recent memory. The surprising part isn’t the number of threats. It’s that every one of them finds the same way in.

AI-powered fraud is accelerating across payment operations. Geopolitical instability is raising the stakes for financial infrastructure. Kyriba’s 2026 CFO survey reflects both pressures: security and fraud prevention ranks as a top priority, while 81% of CFOs say they are concerned about political instability and conflict. The weaknesses being tested are operational: inconsistent payment controls, siloed data, limited visibility, and too much reliance on manual review were not built for the current environment.

The threat environment has outpaced traditional payment controls

AI-powered fraud and geopolitical cyber risk are not abstract concerns for treasury teams. They are active, accelerating pressures that traditional payment controls were never designed to handle.

Why AI payment fraud is outpacing traditional defenses

CFOs and treasurers know AI payment fraud is real. The harder issue is whether their controls can keep up. AI-powered attack methods are evolving faster than human-based controls can respond. That’s the mismatch. Fraud has scaled up with machine-speed tools. Too many defenses still depend on human review.

AI-powered attacks are dangerous because they combine speed, believability, and scale. Impersonation attempts are more convincing. Timing is better calibrated to exploit gaps in approval workflows. Phishing is harder to catch because the obvious red flags are gone.

The treasury teams most vulnerable to AI fraud are not the ones with the oldest technology. They’re the ones who upgraded five years ago and stopped. Fraud evolves. Static controls don’t.

Geopolitical unrest raises the cyber stakes further

The pressure on payment infrastructure does not come from fraud alone. U.S. banks and financial firms are operating under heightened alert as Iran-related cyber risk has intensified. Recent conflicts, including Russia/Ukraine and Hamas/Israel, have also generated elevated cyber threats directed at financial institutions. Waiting for a confirmed attack at the payment layer before strengthening controls is not a risk management strategy. It is a recovery plan.

While AI fraud and geopolitical cyber risk may look like different problems, they expose identical structural weaknesses. Those weaknesses are operational blind spots that make fraud and systemic disruption harder to catch and harder to contain.

Why reactive controls no longer work

Reactive review was designed for a slower payment environment, where fraud was easier to recognize and finance teams had time to intervene. AI-powered fraud breaks that model. Attacks are timed to exploit approval gaps, vendor impersonation can pass human review, and by the time a callback or email confirmation happens, the window may already be closed.

Callback phishing surged 500% in Q4 2025. The attack works because 48% of organizations still rely on callbacks and email confirmations to validate vendor bank account information. Fraudsters are exploiting the very control designed to stop them. That gap is not a technology limitation. It’s a design choice fraudsters have learned to exploit.

Adding more manual steps to a broken model doesn’t fix it. It just slows down the inevitable failure.

What proactive payment fraud prevention actually looks like

The shift from reactive to proactive is about moving control upstream, into the payment flow itself, so that risk is assessed before authorization rather than investigated after the fact.

In practice, a proactive control framework rests on three capabilities that most treasury teams are still building toward.

1. Pre-payment validation and continuous beneficiary verification. Vendor payment fraud often surfaces after the initial relationship is established: when a bank account is updated between payment cycles, when the first payment goes to a newly registered account for an existing vendor, or when a change is imported from an ERP without independent verification. Validating account ownership once at setup is not enough. Recurring validation against account ownership records and sanctions lists, before every outgoing payment, is what closes the gap. Organizations still relying on callbacks and email confirmations to verify those changes are operating with a control fraud has already learned to defeat.
2. Real-time payment screening and connected visibility. Fragmented systems create blind spots, and blind spots are where fraud hides. Treasury teams need a unified view across banks, ERPs, and payment workflows so that anomaly detection can actually work. An AI model flagging unusual payment behavior cannot do its job if it is only seeing part of the picture. When payment data flows in real time across the full ecosystem, controls can screen for policy exceptions, behavioral anomalies, and high-risk patterns before funds leave the organization.
3. Centralized controls. Human judgment will always have a role in payment operations. Where that judgment is applied, and whether it is supported by good data and clear policy, determines whether controls hold under pressure. The risk is controls that exist in silos: treasury payments running through proper approval workflows in the TMS, supplier payments coming out of the ERP without the same controls applied. Same policy on paper; different enforcement in practice. Controls embedded in workflows and applied consistently across every payment type, regardless of origin, reduce the reliance on any single person making the right call at the right moment. When a payment is flagged, the response should be structured, not improvised.

Three steps CFOs should take to strengthen payment fraud prevention now

The best-positioned organizations will not necessarily be the ones with the most sophisticated technology. They will be the ones that close the most obvious gaps first.

Start with an honest assessment of where manual validation still lives in your organization. Map every point in your payment process where a human is the primary control. Ask whether that control can operate at the speed and scale the current threat environment requires. The answer in most organizations will reveal more exposure than expected.

Connect payment data across treasury, AP, procurement, and IT. Payment fraud does not respect organizational boundaries, and neither does cyber risk. The fragmentation that makes treasury operations harder to manage also makes them easier to exploit. Shared visibility across payment initiation, approval, and bank connectivity is a fraud prevention requirement, and CFOs are positioned to drive it.

Treat payment resilience as a treasury strategy priority, not a compliance checkbox. Some CFOs still delegate payment fraud entirely to IT or compliance and call it risk management. At the speed the threat environment is moving, that is not delegation. It is abdication. The decisions about where to invest, which controls to prioritize, and how to sequence the work belong at the treasury leadership level.

More pressure, no more excuses

The pressures on treasury payment operations are not going to simplify. AI-powered fraud is accelerating. Geopolitical instability adds risk to the infrastructure payments depend on. And the pace of change in how money moves means the window for catching a fraudulent transaction keeps shrinking.

The organizations that build proactive, connected payment controls now are not just reducing fraud risk. They are building the operational foundation that modern treasury requires regardless of what the threat environment does next. Reactive cleanup is expensive. Proactive control is strategy.

In the months to come, the CFOs who acted now will be managing faster payment operations with measurably lower fraud losses. The ones who waited will be explaining to their boards why a preventable incident cost them a quarter’s worth of margin.

Read more from Kyriba

• Treasury AI adoption: drive the change or chase it
• Innovative approaches to working capital optimization
• From risk to resilience: why bank connectivity is now a CFO mandate
• Why working capital matters more than ever
• A call to action for banks in the AI age
• The Economics of Liquidity: Why CFOs Must Regularly Monitor and Coordinate with Their Treasurer
• Why your risk management system might be sabotaging your business
• Cash Forecasting: Your Blueprint for Liquidity Performance
• How to Tackle Troublesome Tariffs with 5 Savvy Working Capital Solutions
• TreasurySpring Announces Launch of a Public API and Partnership with Kyriba

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.