Programmable Treasury: when corporate money executes strategy, not just bank transfers

At 08:01 your ERP closes the production day. Five minutes later, supplier payments don’t “go out”; they activate. A logical contract checks that goods have been off-loaded, verifies price, late-delivery penalties and quality rebates, matches the delivery event to the purchase order, and releases cash only if the conditions are met. No end-of-day batches, no T+2, no manual reconciliations: money and data move as one.

Welcome to programmable treasury: sight deposits represented as tokens on DLT infrastructure that execute coded instructions with the same certainty as double-entry accounting. This is not “crypto”; it is regulated bank money in a programmable form that preserves the two-tier model (banks–clients) and, where appropriate, interoperates with central bank money for wholesale settlement. It is the trajectory explored by initiatives such as the BIS’s Project Agorá: tokenised deposits integrated with wholesale central bank money on a public–private “unified ledger” to enable programmable payments and DvP.

Why Programmable Treasury matters now (and not five years ago)

Three forces have aligned.

1. Technological maturity. Production-grade banking platforms have demonstrated programmable payments and intraday liquidity management (e.g., JPM Coin/Onyx), moving the topic out of the lab and into the B2B flows of large corporates.

2. Regulatory construction. In Europe, MiCA has been fully applicable since 30 December 2024 (with a transition for some operators until 1 July 2026), while the DLT Pilot Regime provides a controlled perimeter for DLT-based financial instruments. Supervisory bodies, including the EBA, have also begun targeted work on tokenised deposits. (i.e.)

3. Economics. The opportunity cost of idle balances and reconciliation friction across global supply chains is pushing CFOs and Treasurers towards instant settlement, native conditionality and audit-proof visibility.

   
   

What truly changes for the CFO, COO and CIO

Money as workflow

For the CFO, the novelty isn’t ‘blockchain’ itself: it’s that money executes strategy. A payment is no longer a blind outflow but a graph of conditions: pay if Supplier A delivers by 16:00, if the average transport temperature stayed below 6 °C, if the defect-tolerance threshold is met; otherwise trigger escrow or apply the agreed dynamic discount. This releases capital at the right point in the chain, reduces disputes and cuts accounting exceptions. For the COO, it means orchestrating intraday liquidity as a productive resource—shifting balances across branches, currencies and supply priorities in response to real-time events, not yesterday’s spreadsheets. For the CIO, it means integrating ERP, WMS and TMS with a dependable runtime in which policy, identity and logging are engineered by design.

Reference architecture (without the jargon)

Layer 1 — Tokenised bank accounts. Your sight balances remain deposits at your bank. The on-ledger representation enables atomic transfers and spend rules. No exotic custody; banking-grade governance.

Layer 2 — The programmability engine. Whitelist-only smart contracts, hosted within the bank environment (or a permissioned multi-bank venue), with policy versioning, kill-switches and exposure limits. Industry literature usefully distinguishes bank-side from client-side programmability to balance control, operational risk and flexibility.

Layer 3 — Enterprise connectors. ERP, WMS, TMS and PLM publish attested events (e.g., ASN received, QA passed, signed proof-of-delivery). These events feed payment conditions; outcome webhooks update finance and BI.

Layer 4 — Settlement and markets. For DvP or intraday RFQs, the DLT Pilot permits — within limits — trading and settlement of instruments on DLT in authorised environments; European roadmaps (BIS/central banks) are exploring interoperability with wholesale central bank money to reduce counterparty risk.

Where the (measurable) ROI sits

• Working capital: lower DSO via verified payment-on-delivery, automated dynamic discounts and native escrow.

• Cost of funds: intraday usage and programmed sweeping reduce idle balances and the need for short-term bridge lines.

• Reconciliation: native event-to-payment matching cuts exceptions and after-the-fact manual work.

• Operational risk: codified policies and limits reduce errors and fraud; end-to-end cryptographic audit trails.

  
  

Risks and choices you cannot outsource

Code governance. Who signs, reviews and deploys executable policies? Demand change-management processes equivalent to SOX for the payments cycle.

Interoperability. Avoid islands. Require standardised event attestations and portable escrow logic across banks and jurisdictions; be vigilant about vendor lock-in.

Risk segregation. With tokenised deposits, counterparty risk remains banking risk (not “crypto exposure”), but new surfaces emerge: oracle reliability, runtime security and ledger resilience.

Dynamic compliance. MiCA governs crypto-assets (fully applicable since 30 December 2024, with transitional periods), while tokenised deposits sit squarely in the banking perimeter: track EBA guidance and standard-setting to avoid product ambiguity.

How to start (without a big bang)

Begin with a real micro-scenario: one high-volume, low-variability supplier; one attested event (a digitally signed proof-of-delivery); one bank offering bank-side programmable tokenised deposits with a whitelist of your accounts. Encode the payment policy with penalties, discounts, limits and fallbacks; run it for four weeks. Measure three numbers: days of working capital freed, accounting exceptions avoided, cost per transaction. If the numbers hold, extend to dynamic discounts, fiscal split-payments and intraday micro-settlement across sites.

Uniquon’s role

Uniquon designs and deploys end-to-end programmable treasury: co-developed policy models with your controllers, event-to-ERP integration, a secure runtime with partner banks, and ROI measurement. We bring into the enterprise the patterns proven in system-level programmes (e.g., Project Agorá, RLN UK) and on banking platforms already handling programmable payments in production, translating them into contracts, dashboards and internal controls that speak the language of your Board.