From Treasury Masterminds
Verification of Payee was introduced as an important new weapon against payment fraud. The principle sounds reassuringly simple: before releasing a payment, check whether the beneficiary’s name matches the bank account.
For consumers making individual payments, that can work remarkably well. For corporate treasury teams processing thousands of suppliers, multiple systems and large payment batches, the reality is considerably messier.
During the webinar “VoP in Practice: Where It Actually Works and Where It Fails,” three specialists examined the subject from different angles:
Their conclusion was not that VoP is ineffective. Far from it. But it is not the complete fraud-prevention solution that some organisations may hope it to be.
You can watch a replay of the webinar below:
Matthieu explained that VoP forms part of the EU’s Instant Payments Regulation and must be performed at payment level for relevant SEPA payments within the European Economic Area.
The original intention was to give users more confidence when making instant payments. That makes sense for a consumer creating a beneficiary and sending a single transaction through a banking app.
Corporate payments are different.
Treasury teams usually submit large payment files rather than individual transactions. A single batch might contain hundreds or thousands of suppliers, each potentially returning a match, close match, no match or inconclusive result.
According to Matthieu, no-match rates can reach “up to twenty percent” in some geographies. That clearly does not mean that 20% of payments are fraudulent.
“It should be more taken into account by corporate as a warning mechanism,” he explained.
A no match may indicate an attempted fraud, but it could also result from outdated information, spelling differences, subsidiary names, abbreviations or inconsistencies between legal and commercial names.
VoP therefore provides an important signal, but that signal still needs to be interpreted.
As Matthieu put it, VoP is “definitely not by itself alone a fraud prevention mechanism, because alone this data would not be sufficient.”
From a treasury perspective, Mari described the reaction to VoP as “cautious optimism really rather than just excitement.”
Treasurers have seen controls introduced with considerable fanfare before, only to discover that they do not fully address the operational reality.
The immediate questions are therefore practical:
What does VoP cover?
How reliable is the result?
What happens when the answer is inconclusive?
Who investigates the exceptions?
Can a small treasury team realistically review every mismatch?
The problem becomes particularly visible when a payment batch is ready for release.
Blocking an entire payment run because a small number of beneficiaries return a no match creates its own risks. Suppliers may not deliver goods, invoices may become overdue and relationships may be damaged.
“The payment goes out based on good faith, based on controls, based on banks processing payments overseas,” Mari said when describing the traditional payment process.
VoP adds another layer of information. But when that information only appears immediately before payment, the treasury team is being asked to solve the problem at the latest possible moment.
Maxime argued that waiting until payment is inherently risky.
If an issue is discovered at the end of the process, treasury must choose between delaying the entire payment campaign or accepting the warning and proceeding. Neither option is particularly attractive when suppliers are waiting and commercial deadlines are approaching.
“There is commercial risk because if sometimes you don’t pay, you cannot get the goods to produce what you need to produce,” he explained.
There may also be financial consequences, including late-payment fees.
That is why the panel repeatedly returned to one central idea: verification should start earlier.
Supplier information should ideally be checked when the supplier is onboarded, when bank details are changed and again when the payment is made.
As Maxime summarised it: “Recurrence is the key.”
A supplier may have been valid when it was first created, but circumstances can change. Accounts can be closed, details can be amended, internal systems can be compromised and fraudsters can intervene at different stages of the purchase-to-pay process.
One successful check at onboarding does not create permanent protection.
Checking a supplier before it enters the vendor master sounds logical. In practice, however, onboarding often crosses several departments.
Procurement may own the supplier relationship. Accounts payable may manage invoices. Another team may maintain the master data. Treasury releases the payment. IT controls system access. Compliance or KYC teams may perform additional checks.
That creates a familiar corporate phenomenon: everyone is involved, but no one clearly owns the complete process.
Mari described the problem bluntly:
“There’s no clear end-to-end accountability.”
In that environment, adding another validation step can easily be viewed as additional friction. Each department assumes someone else has completed the check, while the supplier record continues its journey through the organisation with the quiet confidence of data nobody has actually verified.
The scale of vendor databases makes matters worse. Large organisations may have thousands of supplier records, often spread across multiple ERP systems and legal entities.
Without clear ownership, clean data and agreed escalation procedures, VoP simply adds another output that someone must investigate.
During onboarding, Maxime recommended checking three main areas:
First, the company itself. Does it exist, is it active and are there any relevant sanctions or warning signs?
Second, the bank details. Do they make sense in relation to the supplier? A company registered in one country but using an account in an unexpected jurisdiction may deserve additional scrutiny.
Third, the relationship between the two. Does the bank account genuinely belong to the company being onboarded?
He also stressed that information shown on an invoice should not be trusted automatically.
“Never rely on data you will find on an invoice,” he said. Information should be compared with reliable internal records and independently sourced data.
The traditional four-eyes principle remains important, but manual controls have limits. People become tired, rushed or distracted. If employees must perform hundreds of repetitive checks, errors become inevitable.
“The key is to automate everything,” Maxime said.
The objective is not to eliminate human judgement. It is to automate routine confirmations so employees can focus their attention on the smaller number of genuinely suspicious cases.
The discussion became particularly practical when it moved to changes in vendor master data.
Requests may arrive through email and be sent to several people at once. In some organisations, only a designated department can amend supplier records. In others, someone in accounts payable, IT or another function may make the change.
The real vulnerability appears when the request is marked urgent.
“Everything is always urgent,” Mari observed.
An invoice may already be overdue. There may have been a commercial dispute. A supplier may threaten to stop deliveries. Someone senior may appear to demand immediate payment.
That is precisely the pressure fraudsters exploit.
“And that’s where the vulnerability comes in,” Mari said.
Under pressure, employees may bypass the normal callback, approval or verification process. During holiday periods, fraudsters may also target employees who know that managers are unavailable.
Maxime’s advice was straightforward: do not abandon established controls because someone creates a sense of emergency.
One of the webinar’s most important warnings concerned the false reassurance created by a successful match.
VoP largely depends on matching a beneficiary name with an account. But fraudsters may create companies with names that closely resemble legitimate suppliers. They may also use commercial names that imitate familiar brands.
In that situation, the bank may correctly confirm that the account belongs to the stated name. The problem is that the stated name belongs to a fraudulent or misleading entity.
“A match should not be a sign that there is absolutely no fraud,” Matthieu warned.
It only confirms an alignment between the information provided and the information held by the bank. It does not prove that the organisation intends to pay the correct legal entity or that the payment request itself is legitimate.
This creates what Matthieu called the “VoP paradox.”
The control intended to make users safer may also make them less cautious. A green match can discourage further investigation, even when the underlying payment instruction has been manipulated.
Matthieu highlighted the potential value of checking unique corporate identifiers, such as local company-registration numbers or global identifiers, rather than relying only on names. Names can be copied or manipulated. Identifiers are more difficult to imitate.
However, he also noted that support for identifier-based matching remains optional and is not yet consistently available across payment platforms and service providers.
Several audience members mentioned callback procedures as an existing safeguard.
Callbacks can certainly help, but only when they are conducted independently using trusted contact information. Calling the telephone number shown on a suspicious invoice or change request merely gives the fraudster an opportunity to confirm their own fraud with admirable efficiency.
The panel’s message was not that callbacks should be abandoned. It was that no single measure is sufficient.
VoP, callbacks, dual approval, restricted system access, clean master data and automated verification all contribute different layers of protection.
Maxime also pointed to the wider cost of a successful fraud. A €100,000 loss does not merely require €100,000 in additional revenue to recover. A business operating at a 20% margin would need to generate substantially more sales to replace that lost profit.
There are also reputational, commercial and psychological consequences, particularly for the employee who released the payment.
The webinar closed with a discussion about whether vendor master data is the weakest link in the payment process.
Mari’s answer captured the central limitation of VoP:
“It is a check. It’s not a control environment.”
Without reliable vendor data and cross-functional governance, the organisation is simply attempting to catch problems at the end of the process.
Maxime agreed that technology alone cannot solve the issue.
“Fraud isn’t prevented by technology on its own, not by policy alone either,” he said. “It happens when strong governance is backed by trusted and automated verification of the payment data.”
Matthieu added another perspective. The weakest link may not be the master data itself, but the absence of connections between systems and teams.
Treasury may not know that a supplier’s details were recently changed. Accounts payable may not see the warnings available to treasury. Procurement may have information about the supplier relationship that never reaches the payment approver.
Better integration and a clear audit trail can therefore be just as important as the verification result.
VoP gives treasury teams another useful layer of protection. A no match can expose errors or trigger an investigation before money is lost.
But VoP cannot determine intent. It cannot solve poor governance. It cannot clean an unreliable vendor database. And it cannot guarantee that a matching name belongs to the supplier the company genuinely intended to pay.
The most effective approach is therefore continuous rather than transactional:
VoP is not the final answer to payment fraud. It is one part of a wider control environment that must combine people, processes, data and technology.
Fraudsters will continue to adapt. Treasury teams, inconveniently, will have to do the same.
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 partner, Embat
Accounting with the best financial team is a critical factor of success for any business, so nothing is more important for the CFO than surrounding themselves with the right people, this is what will allow you to enhance your role and focus on value generation from a much more strategic than operational perspective.
Traditionally, the financial domain was characterised by the mastery and application of a series of technical knowledge, which when well used not only allows one to ‘explain the past’, but also to generate reliable information for business decision making thus minimising the risk of errors.
It is the advance of technology itself, which has allowed them to redefine their role, following the same line of evolution as that of the CFO themselves, that is, towards a vision much more focused on the company’s business and strategy and not merely focused on explaining what has happened and on regulatory compliance.
This reconversion of the area requires the need for professional profiles that not only have a solid “technical” knowledge, but also have the necessary skills to take advantage of the benefits offered by the new technologies available.
It is above all a change in the culture of the area that must accompany and support the evolution of the business itself, adopting new ways of working, based on collaboration, experimentation and continuous learning, while at the same time requiring a rethinking of the operating model, including the automation of tasks and the redefinition of internal processes.
Combining analytical rigor with business intuition, technical precision with the flexibility to adapt to changes in the environment, is essential when it comes to building a financial team, where technical expertise becomes a necessary (and mandatory), but not sufficient, skill.
It is therefore necessary for financial professionals to have a broader understanding of the business they manage, in order to be able to adapt as quickly as possible to changes, which are becoming faster and faster.
The evolution of the CFO in today’s business strategy
Discover the evolution of the CFO and their relevance in today’s business landscape.
Being able to translate and being able to communicate complex information in such a way that it can be used for decision making by the rest of the organisation, which generally speaks a different ‘language’ and does not usually have the same technical knowledge, requires the development and good application of what are defined as ‘soft skills’.
Empathy, proactive attitude, autonomy, thinking critically about how things are done, adapting to new scenarios, interacting with interdepartmental teams, are critical and essential skills that any finance team must have in order to turn data into analysis, business opportunities into results and strategy into profitability for the company.
This is where the CFO takes on a central role, in the sense of being able to integrate the different skills of the financial team, identifying both their strengths and weaknesses, thus ensuring that all members of the team work towards the same common goal.
Therefore, it becomes relevant to promote diversity within the financial team not only in terms of the incorporation of people with different professional experiences, but also with other ways of thinking and approach, in order to encourage the generation of innovative ideas that can become creative solutions to the problems that arise.
A diverse finance team can also be better prepared to meet the challenges of a globalized marketplace. Companies operating in multiple countries need teams that understand the particularities of each region, both from a technical and cultural perspective.
On the other hand, it is necessary to promote a culture of open and ‘bidirectional’ communication between the CFO and the members of their team, where the contributions of each one of them are valued, something that is relevant to strengthen the group and thus tend to achieve the proposed objectives.
Trust is another essential requirement for building a cohesive team, especially when confidential and strategic information must often be managed, which is why it is essential to guarantee its integrity. Likewise, it must be bidirectional, thus generating a climate of security that reinforces open communication, as well as the responsible assumption of risks and the ability to learn not only from the successes achieved, but also from the failures.
Thus, forming a financial team is a process that requires a certain “science” in the selection of the best talents with the necessary technical knowledge for the development of their functions, as well as the purest “art”, since it must be complemented with the ability to adapt, innovate and collaborate closely with other areas of the company.
In this way, a balanced integration between art and science is what really determines the difference between a financial team that is oriented to the administration of resources, and another that is dedicated to the generation of value through continuous improvement.
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 written by Nadia Callaghan
Treasury has quietly become one of the most powerful levers for improving financial performance. In many organisations, it is still treated as a protective cost-centre function, focused on liquidity, compliance and risk management. Yet the businesses that outperform today are those that recognise treasury as a value creator. From my experience, optimising finance returns is not only about taking more risk; it is also about tightening the fundamentals that determine how efficiently money moves through the organisation.
The first and most immediate source of value comes from strengthening collections. Cashflow improves dramatically when organisations collect what they are owed, when they are owed, without leakage or delay. Accounts receivable often suffers from fragmented ownership, inconsistent follow‑up and manual allocation processes that slow everything down. Commission collections can be even more complex, especially in industries where revenue is shared across multiple parties. When treasury leads a disciplined approach to collections, supported by real‑time ageing visibility, automated reminders and clear accountability, liquidity improves almost instantly. Faster allocation of incoming cash reduces unapplied balances, improves forecasting accuracy and frees capital that would otherwise sit idle.
Cost discipline is the second major lever. Operating expenses are rarely fixed; they simply feel that way because they are not reviewed often enough. Treasury can materially improve returns by treating bank fees and partner contracts as commercial agreements rather than administrative necessities. Regular fee reviews reveal charges for services no longer used, pricing tiers based on outdated volumes and FX or payment fees that are significantly above market rates. Debt‑side partner contracts often contain renewal clauses, utilisation fees or covenant‑related costs that can be renegotiated when treasury brings data to the conversation. Organisations that review these agreements quarterly typically achieve meaningful cost reductions without changing their operating model.
Once collections tighten and costs come under control, surplus liquidity becomes visible. Idle cash is one of the most common drags on returns, and yet it is also one of the easiest to fix. Treasury can deploy surplus funds into safe, yield‑generating instruments such as money market funds, notice accounts, term deposits or custody accounts for short‑term securities. These options provide daily liquidity, low risk and significantly better returns than traditional operating accounts. Even modest yields create meaningful profit when applied to large balances that previously sat dormant.
Centralising liquidity amplifies these gains. Cash pooling allows organisations to treat group‑wide cash as a single strategic asset rather than a collection of isolated balances. Physical pooling sweeps cash into a master account, reducing external borrowing and enabling centralised investment strategies. Notional pooling aggregates balances virtually, optimising interest without the complexity of intercompany loans. Both approaches reduce reliance on external debt, lower interest expense and increase the organisation’s ability to generate returns from its own liquidity.
The final lever is automation, which is often underestimated in its impact. Manual treasury processes consume time, introduce errors and prevent teams from focusing on value‑creating activities. Automating bank reconciliations, AR allocation, commission matching, payment runs, forecasting and intercompany settlements reduces operating costs and strengthens control. Automation also improves data quality, which in turn improves decision‑making. Treasury teams that operate with clean, real‑time data can model scenarios more accurately, anticipate liquidity needs earlier and respond to market conditions faster.
Optimising returns is not a single initiative; it is a discipline. When treasury strengthens collections, reviews expenses with commercial rigour, deploys surplus cash intelligently, centralises liquidity and automates manual processes, it becomes a profit engine rather than a cost centre. The organisation benefits from improved cashflow, reduced leakage, lower operating costs and higher returns on liquidity. Treasury’s role shifts from safeguarding the business to powering it, creating a financial foundation that supports growth, resilience and strategic ambition.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
