Treasury Management Systems (TMS) Integration
How to aggregate cash visibility across banks. Connecting via EBICS/Host-to-Host, parsing XML statements (camt.053), and centralized liquidity.
As fintechs grow, they open accounts at multiple banks (SVB, JP Morgan, Barclays). A Treasury Management System (TMS) aggregates these into a single dashboard. For engineers, building a TMS integration layer means dealing with heavy-duty banking protocols like EBICS, SFTP Host-to-Host, and mutual TLS authentication, rather than simple REST APIs.
Connectivity Protocols (EBICS vs API)
APIs: Great for real-time balances, but fragmented. Every bank has a different schema.
EBICS/H2H: The industrial standard. A secure file transport protocol used to fetch camt.053 (End of Day) and camt.052 (Intraday) reports.
Engineering Task: Build an "Aggregator Service" that polls these endpoints, downloads the XMLs, normalizes the data, and updates the central Cash Ledger.
Cash Positioning and Forecasting
The goal of TMS integration is "Cash Positioning."
The View: Aggregating Bank_A_USD + Bank_B_USD + Bank_C_EUR (converted) to show total global liquidity.
The Forecast: Using historical AP/AR data from the ledger to project: "Based on current burn and pending payouts, will we overdraft Account B on Friday?" This allows automated "Sweeping" transfers to cover gaps.
Frequently Asked Questions
Common questions about this topic
QWhy not use screen scraping?
Screen scraping is fragile and insecure for corporate treasury. MFA breaks it. Host-to-Host connections are authenticated via hardware keys or certificates and are SLA-backed.
QWhat is a "Sweep"?
An automated transfer that moves excess cash from subsidiary accounts to a master Header Account to maximize interest yield.
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