Why Treasury Can’t Afford to Miss the Intraday Markets Opportunity

If you’re leading a treasury or liquidity function, it’s time to take a hard look at what’s coming next. Intraday markets are still emerging, but it’s clear they hold the potential to transform how value and risk flow through the financial system. Institutions that are ready to access these markets stand to gain significant revenue and capital efficiency. In contrast, others risk falling behind with outdated buffers, idle capital, and legacy practices that can’t keep pace.

The time for treasury as a passive cost centre is over. With the rise of intraday FX swap and repo markets, treasury teams have a unique opportunity to position themselves as drivers of profitability. By making changes today, they can ensure they’re ready to unlock capital exactly when and where it’s needed most.

What’s particularly interesting about these markets is the precision they offer. If you’re running short on a particular asset intraday, you’ll be able to manage that shortage with laser focus. Equally, if you’ve got excess balances, here’s a new way to put idle capital to work – making it available to lend, borrow or swap for defined stretches within the trading day. These markets present a genuine opportunity to reduce risk and increase efficiency.

Of course, it’s one thing to recognise the opportunity and another to actually capitalise on it. As I’ve said before, it’s easy to complain about inefficiencies and see them predominently as an operational cost, but the crux of the matter is straightforward: if we want to take advantage of new intraday markets at scale (rather than merely for closely observed, manually orchestrated pilot flows), institutions will need to break free from the constraints of legacy processes and technology. Batch-based architectures, disconnected data silos and slow and inflexible liquidity management processes simply won’t be able to deliver the speed, safety or transparency required for scaled access.

The Real Cost of Inefficient Liquidity

Mobilising assets intraday through swaps and repos presents significant revenue opportunities, but outdated infrastructure creates friction and missed opportunities that hold treasury and liquidity managers back. Key challenges include:

• Lack of Real-Time Visibility: Without accurate, real-time insight into current and projected intraday balances, firms can’t know with confidence whether they’ll be long or short in a given currency or asset, limiting proactive intraday market participation.
• Insufficient Forecasting: Most forecasting systems fall short when it comes to intraday precision. Without clarity on the expected timing of inbound payments or the resulting surpluses and deficits, firms can’t effectively optimise trades or seize fleeting opportunities.
• Rigid Settlement Processes: Legacy settlement systems built around daily cycles and restrictive market cutoffs are slow, risky (because they are asynchronous) and generally lack real-time transparency. These limitations prevent the agility required for fast (even immediate), risk-free swaps and repo settlements. The growing opportunities presented by the combination of fiat, tokenised, and digital asset also serve to increase complexity.

The impact? Valuable capital remains tied up and unable to be optimised. Treasury teams miss opportunities to monetise surpluses or address shortfalls due to a lack of speed, precision, and settlement certainty. In a nutshell, legacy systems and outdated processes not only immobilise capital but also hinder competitive agility, business growth, and will restrict many firms from being able to fully participate in emerging intraday FX swap and repo markets.

For treasury leaders and digital transformation teams, the challenge is clear: reduce the cost of idle capital while justifying investment in modern systems. The question is no longer whether modernisation is necessary but how to implement it in manageable, risk-free steps. A full-scale ‘rip and replace’ overhaul isn’t realistic, but incremental, practical upgrades will prove essential to staying competitive and unlocking new revenue streams.

Building a Practical Path to Intraday Liquidity Optimisation

To compete in intraday FX swap and repo markets, institutions need three things: 

• Continuous, real-time visibility of all liquidity positions.
• Precision forecasting capable of pinpointing exactly when and where they will be long or short in a given asset, security or currency intraday.
• Ability to rapidly and transparently complete safe settlements on demand and on their own terms.

Here’s what’s critical:

• Real-Time Liquidity Views and Precision Forecasting: Firms will need comprehensive, consolidated dashboards delivering real-time insight into all liquidity positions (including all account balances irrespective of the provider, exposures, credit facilities and obligations) across all entities and jurisdictions. Plus automated models that can accurately predict intraday liquidity swings to surface exactly when and where imbalances are likely to arise – and for how long by overlaying historical counterparty payment patterns with real-time flows.
• Smart, Automated and Controlled Payment Orchestration: In intraday markets, speed and precision dictate who can capitalise on opportunities. Smart scheduled settlements allow firms to automatically orchestrate payment instructions based on time, funding availability, or priority. Automated controls ensure payment releases only occur under your specified conditions.
• On-Demand Conditional Settlements: Atomic Payment vs Payment (PvP), Delivery vs Payment (DvP), and Delivery vs Delivery (DvD) settlements reduce risk, boost business capacity, and preserve liquidity. Firms must adapt so they can safely settle transactions instantly or at specific times on a 24/7 schedule with the certainty of settlement finality, whilst ensuring flexibility and alignment with their funding cycles, free from market-wide settlement windows. 
• Automated, Rules-Based Payment Workflows: Systems should support scheduled, conditional and on-demand settlements tailored to liquidity needs, reducing operational risk and manual errors.
• Modular, Interoperable Technology and Intelligent Controls: You’ll need flexible technology that connects seamlessly to legacy systems. Combine this with strong, rules-based governance – automated compliance, auditable workflows, and robust operational control – to confidently connect to and participate in these high-velocity markets.

At Baton Systems, we deliver all of this, empowering institutions to engage confidently and reap the benefits of new intraday markets.

I’m seeing the pivot in our markets firsthand, and firms that embrace these new intraday models are setting the pace. If the themes above resonate, or if you’re wrestling with visibility and control in your own treasury operation, I’d welcome a conversation.

We will be on the ground at Sibos in Frankfurt later this month. If you’d like practical insights on how to unlock the full potential of intraday liquidity – and real-world guidance on modular transformation – we’d love to talk.

Ready to put your treasury to work as a strategic asset? To book a meeting at Sibos click on the button below or select this link to learn more about how we’re supporting firms keen to optimise intraday liquidity.