When Money Never Sleeps: Managing Liquidity in a 24/7 World
- Marcia Klingensmith
- Oct 16
- 2 min read
The New Liquidity Reality: 24/7 Liquidity Management in an Instant Payments World
Back in 2005, Thomas L. Friedman wrote The World Is Flat. Today, that flattening has reached finance.
Money has always followed the sun, circulating globally while the world slept. What’s changed is visibility. With instant payments, settlement happens in real time, exposing how liquidity truly moves across borders and rails. For financial leaders, it’s both thrilling and unnerving.
Legacy systems were built for business hours. Instant payments operate without pause. When time disappears from the settlement equation, so do the buffers that once made liquidity feel predictable.
Cutoff times once defined control. Overnight funding reset the day. Liquidity buffers were based on hours, not seconds. But in a 24/7 world, every transaction is final, every second counts, and resilience is tested continuously.
The Hidden Risk Few Are Watching
Most institutions focus on fraud, compliance, and integration. But the real threat is subtler: liquidity lock-in.
Instant payments draw directly from reserve accounts, 24x7x365. If funds cannot move as quickly as payments do, transactions fail not from fraud, but from lack of funding. The Bank for International Settlements calls this liquidity elasticity: the ability to stretch and redeploy funds in real time.
Without elasticity, speed becomes a liability.
Treasury in Motion
In the instant era, treasurers face three new realities:
Continuous Funding: Liquidity must be available at all times, including weekends and holidays.
Intraday Visibility: End-of-day reporting no longer cuts it; dashboards must update in seconds.
Cross-Rail Orchestration: RTP, FedNow, Visa Direct, and Mastercard Send each move differently, and fragmentation creates idle liquidity.
Real-time settlement does not eliminate liquidity risk; it shifts it from timing risk to availability risk.
A Glimpse of Leadership
Forward-leaning banks are already adapting:
24/7 Liquidity Desks maintain around-the-clock coverage or shared regional models.
API-Driven Sweeps and Alerts trigger funding transfers through the Federal Reserve’s Liquidity Management Tool.
AI-Enabled Forecasting predicts flow volatility and reallocates liquidity across rails in real time.
These strategies move institutions from asking “Do we have enough?” to “Where will we need it next?”
Why It Matters
Liquidity resilience is not just a technical challenge; it is a trust issue.One failed instant payment can damage reputation and erode confidence.The winners will be the institutions that manage liquidity as dynamically as the payments they move.
If you do not know where your liquidity is overnight, you do not know your exposure.
Instant payments do not just make money faster; they make it relentless.
💡 Continue Reading on Substack: Get the full SAFE™ Liquidity Resilience Checklist and see how leading banks are building 24/7 liquidity elasticity.👉 Subscribe to The Instant Edge for exclusive access.
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