Abdul Rafay Gadit, Co-Founder of ZIGChain
Shifts in the way money moves ultimately reshape entire corporate routines. For years, companies lived with slow settlements, clunky internal systems, and those awkward “banking hours” that never quite lined up with the pace of business. But that rhythm doesn’t work anymore. Treasury teams feel that the tension is building and are being pushed to rethink how they handle liquidity and risk.
Which prompts the real question: why are so many corporations starting to shift their cash reserves toward blockchain-based infrastructure, and what does that change look like inside a treasury function? This piece breaks down the drivers behind that transition and the growing role of transparency, programmable money, and regulated intermediaries in modern finance.
What’s driving corporations to move cash reserves onto blockchain infrastructure?
If you sit with any treasury team long enough, you’ll hear the same quiet frustration: money just doesn’t move the way the rest of the world does. Meanwhile, the numbers tell their own story. Tokenised real-world assets have ballooned, roughly 245× in five years, now past $35 billion, a telling signal that capital is drifting away from the old “park it in a static account” mindset.
Companies are also realising that cash left sitting still simply cannot keep up with markets that operate around the clock. That is why many treasurers are now looking at blockchain infrastructure because it offers a faster, more predictable way to move and manage funds. Large institutions have already started to test this shift. Franklin Templeton, for example, now issues and manages parts of its US government money-market fund on-chain, using tokenised infrastructure to streamline settlement and reporting. Moves like this signal to corporate treasuries that faster, programmable money flows are becoming a practical tool rather than a theoretical one.
In practice, these rails help treasury teams reduce the delays that have slowed corporate payments for years. Settlements completed sooner, and routine tasks, such as rebalancing or scheduled payouts, can run quietly in the background instead of being handled through constant manual follow-ups. The outcome is straightforward: smoother operations and a level of control that older systems were never built to provide. These tools let treasurers optimise yield on idle balances, tighten risk controls by reducing settlement exposure, and automate routine movements that previously relied on manual intervention. When those efficiencies compound, the gap between traditional systems and digital rails becomes harder to ignore.
The pressure is also coming from outside the organisation. More than 560 million people already use digital assets, and adoption is expected to reach one billion by 2028. Consumers now expect money to move instantly and to earn yield continuously. When individuals operate on rails that fast, companies working on slower systems start to feel the gap.
As consumers move faster, companies with slower financial systems risk falling behind. That pressure is now pushing many treasurers to shift more of their cash onto blockchain rails so they can match the speed and expectations of the people they serve.
How does blockchain transparency change traditional treasury management?
Traditional treasury reporting often leaves teams working with partial visibility. Information from different systems must be reconciled before the full picture becomes clear, and that process can take time. Blockchain flips that dynamic completely. Every movement and every microscopic adjustment is verifiable in real time, which means treasurers aren’t waiting for quarterly snapshots to understand where things stand.
The old governance stack, with delayed statements and secondhand reporting, starts to look clunky next to a single ledger that never changes and never needs to be “matched.” Auditors and regulators can check what they need without the usual back-and-forth. And honestly, it aligns with what people expect now anyway. Surveys say 65% of consumers want their digital-asset services delivered through institutions they already trust, and transparency sits at the center of that trust.
But real-time transparency only works when it is paired with compliant privacy layers. Institutions don’t want their treasury strategies, liquidity positions, or counterparties exposed on a public ledger. What they value is controlled visibility: auditable records, permissioned access, and data that regulators and internal teams can verify without compromising confidentiality. That shift makes governance easier, reduces manual checks, and removes the secondhand reporting delays that have long shaped traditional workflows.
What role do DATCOs play in bridging traditional finance and blockchain?
DATCOs (Digital Asset Treasury Companies) provide the structure and oversight that many corporates need when they begin engaging with blockchain-based finance. They manage the essential groundwork: custody, AML/KYC processes, regulatory reporting, and integration with existing ERP systems. Without this layer, most treasury teams would face the difficult task of rebuilding large parts of their operational stack, which is unrealistic for many firms.
The practical value is in the gradual path they offer. Treasurers don’t have to flip a switch and abandon their banks. They can move in steps, keep traditional accounts, test tokenized instruments on the side, and slowly expand into yield-bearing assets, all while staying squarely within compliance lines. That reduces risk, both technical and reputational.
And because digital-asset adoption keeps climbing, 66% of retail investors plan to integrate these assets within five years, DATCOs are filling the gap between rising demand and the cautious pace of institutional change. They’re also designing new tools that didn’t exist before: tokenized deposits, automated yield engines, and cross-chain liquidity modules. They’re becoming the infrastructure underneath a new treasury model.
What does the future of corporate treasury management look like as digital assets become mainstream?
With digital-asset users projected to approach one billion by 2028, the systems that move money will have to match that scale and speed. Treasuries will manage blended portfolios by default: tokenized government assets, stablecoins, yield-bearing digital instruments, and whatever new formats emerge. AI-driven forecasting will become routine, predicting liquidity needs, adjusting hedges, and reallocating funds in the background. And instead of bouncing between five dashboards, everything will land in one view, traditional and digital side by side.
Regulation will shape much of that transition. Frameworks like MiCA in the EU, stablecoin legislation in the US, and licensing regimes in the UAE and Singapore are defining how tokenised instruments can be issued, held, and reported. As the regulatory perimeter becomes clearer, corporates gain the confidence to integrate digital assets into treasury policies rather than treat them as experimental add-ons. Faster settlement, lower operating costs, and transparent reporting then move from “innovation tests” to standard operating expectations.
Consumer behaviour nudges all of this forward. With 58% of global consumers either using or considering digital assets, institutions can’t run on older rhythms without falling behind. Faster settlement, lower operating costs, and transparent reporting become natural expectations, not differentiators.
Treasurers are preparing for a landscape built around digital-first liquidity rather than the constraints of legacy banking rails because that’s the direction the world is already moving.
About the Author:
Abdul Rafay Gadit, Co-Founder of ZIGChain
Abdul Rafay Gadit is the Co-Founder of ZIGChain, a next-generation Layer 1 blockchain protocol created to provide the core infrastructure for real-world financial applications. At ZIGChain, Rafay oversees the development of foundational blockchain components, including the Wealth Management Engine and a $100 million ecosystem