Consolidating treasury with a single multi-currency account

Margarita Matjanova, COLIBRIX ONE’s Head of Corporate Customer Department, explains why international groups are consolidating cross-border payments across jurisdictions into one multi-currency account.

Why treasury consolidation matters more than adding another bank account

International groups increasingly need a single multi-currency account to run cross-border payments rather than a dozen banks. Ten years ago, treasury teams optimised payment costs; today they optimise liquidity across entities, currencies, and jurisdictions.

Several trends are accelerating this shift. Regulatory requirements keep expanding, and real-time payment schemes are raising expectations for speed, making fragmented treasury structures more visible than ever. As a result, treasury consolidation is becoming not just an efficiency initiative but a strategic requirement for international growth.

The hidden cost of banking everywhere at once

When a company opens a subsidiary, the reflex is to open a local account to match it. But repeat that across four or five jurisdictions and the group is soon managing a patchwork of institutions, each with its own onboarding, AML documentation, cut-off times, and time zone.

Invisible on any single transaction, the friction accumulates: repeated compliance checks, balances in the wrong currency, and treasury reconciling instead of managing liquidity. According to the FSB's report, fewer than 45% of B2B and B2P payments settle within one business day globally, while the average cost of cross-border payments remains stubbornly sticky despite years of reform.

The real issue is not the account, but what a growing group needs from it: visibility into where money sits, control over when it moves, liquidity where obligations fall due, and trust that every payment is identifiable. These four ideas shape what follows.

Visibility: seeing the money in one place

The alternative is to bring the group's accounts under a single payment provider. One international holding across four European jurisdictions recently opened a multi-currency account for each of its entities with us, on a single platform. Instead of scattering accounts across four banks, the group now sees every balance in one place.

Consolidating those relationships cut its payment servicing costs by close to 30% and recovered internal time lost to reconciliation and duplicated compliance. Paying salaries in the right currency also stopped being a special case, so staff across Europe could be paid in local currencies.

Control and liquidity: deciding when and how money moves

The common misconception about international payments is that the payment itself is the challenge. In reality, once funds arrive, finance teams still need to decide where they should remain, where they will be spent, and whether conversion is necessary at all.

As they expand, incoming and outgoing flows rarely happen in the same currency or at the same time. Automatically converting every payment may simplify processing, but it often removes flexibility exactly when treasury teams need it most.

Keeping balances in their original currencies allows companies to decide when and if conversion makes sense, aligning liquidity with future obligations rather than the mechanics of the payment itself.

The same FSB report notes that when the receiving provider converts a payment, an FX margin of roughly 0.7% to 1.1% is added on top of the headline fee, which a group with fragmented balances pays whenever money lands in the wrong account.

Multi-currency accounts that maintain separate currency balances under a single relationship, with Swift and SEPA payments running on the same platform, make this operationally much easier.

Trust: every payment easy to identify

Cross-border payments involve more than moving funds. Every transaction also carries information that counterparties, auditors, and regulators rely on.

When payments are routed through intermediary accounts, identifying the true sender often becomes an additional manual step. While technically acceptable, it introduces unnecessary questions during reconciliation and compliance reviews.

Using an account with a dedicated IBAN under the company's own name makes every payment immediately identifiable. For suppliers, employees, and financial institutions alike, that transparency reduces friction long before anyone needs to ask where the money came from.

Single platform instead of multi-account relationships

When evaluating an international banking partner, companies often compare features: supported currencies, payment rails, onboarding time. Those questions matter, but they miss the bigger picture.

The more important question is whether the banking setup reduces operational complexity as the business grows.

• Can treasury see liquidity across the group?
• Can funds stay where future obligations will arise?
• Can every payment be easily identified by counterparties and regulators?
• Can new entities be integrated without multiplying banking relationships?

If the answer is yes, the group has visibility, control, liquidity, and trust in one relationship instead of multiple ones, and international banking stops being another operational challenge and becomes part of the company's infrastructure for growth.

Every new market shouldn't require another banking relationship. It should simply become another place where the business can put its capital to work.

About the author

Margarita Matjanova is a senior finance professional with more than 14 years of experience in banking and financial services. Her background encompasses corporate banking, relationship management, business development, and strategic collaboration with financial institutions and corporate clients. She has led client-focused initiatives aimed at improving service quality and supporting business growth. Her professional interests include financial innovation, digital transformation, customer relationship management, and the evolving role of financial institutions in a changing economic environment.

 

About COLIBRIX ONE

COLIBRIX ONE is a payments infrastructure platform providing merchant acquiring, e-money accounts/payment accounts with dedicated named IBANs and SEPA/Swift access, and virtual cards with proprietary BIN numbers for ecommerce businesses operating across global markets. 

COLIBRIX ONE is a trading name used by the companies Colibrix Limited, Mellifera Kartiera Limited and Mellifera Operations Limited. Products and services are provided by the relevant company in accordance with its applicable jurisdiction and regulatory permissions.

Mellifera Kartiera Limited is an MFSA-authorised EMI (ref. C107685). Colibrix Limited is authorised by the United Kingdom Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) as an Authorised Electronic Money Institution (Firm Reference Number 927920).