Treasury teams across Asia Pacific are turning AI ambition into action, focusing less on what artificial intelligence might do and more on how to implement it effectively and at scale. Treasury teams are also clear-eyed about the benefits generated by the adoption of digital currencies, but the lack of interoperability is a barrier to full-scale, universal deployment.
These are some of the findings of HSBC’s Redefining Treasury in Asia Pacific 2026: Voices of Treasury report. For the third edition, HSBC held a series of treasury-focused roadshows across 11 markets in the Asia Pacific region, speaking with 680 treasury and finance professionals.
Confidence in AI remains strong: 72% of respondents expect AI to be extremely or very useful in three years’ time, and a further 23% expect it to be somewhat useful, showing sustained momentum as teams move from experimentation to implementation.
“The conversation around AI has moved past curiosity and into capability,” said Manoj Dugar, Head of Global Payments Solutions, Asia ex Greater China at HSBC. “The differentiator now lies in execution – getting the fundamentals such as data, governance, and controls – so that AI can scale beyond pilots and deliver impact at pace.”
As AI adoption accelerates across organisations, treasury teams need to work harder to keep pace. Almost 2 in 3 (63%) said treasury is currently behind the wider business on AI adoption, while nearly 1 in 5 said they have not used AI in treasury at all.
Respondents were clear on what it will take to scale. 70% of respondent states integration with existing systems was a key hurdle, head and shoulders above expertise (47%) and cost (44%). Data quality (35%) was also a key hurdle, a reminder that AI is only as good as the data it has access to.
Interest in digital currencies is growing – but also bifurcated. 44% of participants were very or somewhat likely to use digital currencies in the next two years, yet 39% were unlikely. This polarisation underlines the fact that it is still early days for corporate adoption of digital currencies.
Respondents highlighted greater treasury efficiency (55%) and lower transaction costs (52%) as the main benefits of digital currencies, with faster cross-border settlement a priority use case. That said, the single biggest barrier to adoption is the lack of interoperability between different types of digital currencies.
“Treasurers clearly see the benefits of adopting digital currencies, whether it is increasing efficiency, reducing cost, or enhancing liquidity,” said Yvonne Yiu, Head of Global Payments Solutions, Greater China at HSBC. “But to move more treasurers from the sidelines onto the playing field, the industry as a whole needs to deliver interoperability.”
The shift from concept to execution is already under way. In August, HSBC completed the first inter-bank tokenised deposit transaction on Swift’s blockchain-based ledger, not only demonstrating interbank interoperability, but helping advance industry progress on 24/7 cross-border payments.
“Treasury is an organisation’s engine room of growth, rarely seen from the deck, but without it the ship does not move,” Dugar added. “Successfully integrating transformational technologies such as AI and tokenisation is the first step toward achieving significant efficiencies – greater automation, faster execution, and smarter decision support.”
