Ahead of the Trade Treasury Payments Awards ceremony in Jersey City, TTP spoke with Timothy Rose, Head of UK Sales at cflox, winner of the Payments Innovation of the Year Award, about why traditional supply chain finance programmes are struggling to reach much of the supplier base, and how treasurers are rethinking liquidity in a more uncertain environment.

For many corporates, supply chain finance still relies on heavy supplier onboarding and complex system integrations, but according to Rose, that structure often limits impact before a programme even begins.

“The traditional supply chain finance programmes really heavily depend on supplier onboarding,” he said. Larger suppliers may see little reason to participate, while smaller suppliers can be too costly to onboard at scale. Then you’ve got the long tail, which is sometimes difficult to get onboarded because, from an economic perspective, it’s just too small.”

The result, he argues, is liquidity that is there in theory but is hard to access in practice. “It’s not on demand,” Rose said. “It’s really a liquidity that can only be used once those suppliers are set up.”

Internal coordination can be just as challenging. Treasury, procurement, and IT often have competing priorities, which inevitably slow the pace of implementation. “Treasury is driven by extending DPOs, while procurement itself is really into supplier relationships and supplier stability. This kind of tension between those two counterparties is often a stumbling block.”

Against a backdrop of geopolitical risk, tariffs, and supply chain disruption, Rose says the conversation with treasurers is shifting away from incremental optimisation and towards flexibility. “The key shift that we’re seeing is that treasurers want to be able to steer their working capital metrics effectively and now they’re willing to pay for that liquidity on demand,” he said.

That demand is driving interest in buyer-led models like cflox pay that are inherently simpler because they come with no supplier onboarding and IT requirements. In addition, there is a growing need among smaller suppliers for earlier support through tools such as pre-shipment finance. There has also been a notable uptick in mid-market corporates, which have historically been underserved by traditional programmes, exploring these options.

More than 170 programmes on an international level have already been implemented using this model, proving that payment terms can be extended without involving suppliers. For treasurers, that track record provides the confidence that on-demand working capital is not just a concept, but a scalable reality.

For Rose, supply chain finance must become faster, easier to deploy, and more responsive to treasury needs. “Treasurers and CFO´s want to have that liquidity and working capital effect on demand so they can balance out the tension that they´ve got between, say, a tariff tension, and the additional working capital that’s needed,” he said. “Our clients need to have that working capital available at their fingertips immediately.”