India vital to BofA’s strategy; plans to expand its GPS business in the country

Winnie Chen, APAC head, Global Payments Solutions, Bank of America.

Bank of America (BofA) is working on local storage of payments data and is taking various measures, including bringing in legal entity identifier (LEI) for both domestic and cross-border transactions, to promote transparency in large-value transactions, Winnie Chen, head of Asia Pacific Global Payments Solutions (GPS), has said.

In an interview to Moneycontrol, Chen also talked about how the bank is helping protect clients from fraud and cyber events, why India is vital to BofA’s plan and how it plans to expand its GPS business in the country. Edited excerpts of the interview:

What are the focus areas in the APAC region as far as payments is concerned?

There are four key focus areas for the global payments solutions team, the business I lead, in APAC.

The first one concerns how to make it easier for companies to make cross-border payments by leveraging the various real-time payment networks that exist across the region. We’re doing that through our banking platform CashPro, where clients will be able to originate payments through all four channels — CashPro Online, Connect (host to host), API and the mobile app —  to give them a consistent, ubiquitous experience.

The second focus (area) is helping our clients protect themselves from fraud and cyber events with tools and informational updates to make sure their employees are alert to those threats and have the appropriate resources in place.

The third initiative concerns migrating to ISO 20022 standards, which will facilitate the integration and exchange of richer and more structured information in both traditional and new-age RTP messages.

The fourth area is specific to India. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has set clear milestones to strengthen the integrity of the payments ecosystem and we are seeing the payments landscape evolve around that.

We are working on several aspects, including local storage of payments data, ensuring better oversight and data sovereignty, and introducing LEI (legal entity identifier) for both domestic and cross-border transactions to promote transparency in large-value transactions among others to ensure we seamlessly support our clients.

Some of your peers have upped their payments game. Where do you see yourself?

Payments is the core of what we do. We’ve been a leader in payments for many decades in APAC as well as globally. Our payments capabilities are supported by Bank of America’s annual $12 billion budget allocated to technology, of which $4 billion is directed to new initiatives alone.

One recent demonstration of that is how we expanded our foreign exchange solution Guaranteed FX Rates, allowing clients to lock in FX rates for up to 365 days – the longest tenor on the street – for cross-border payments. Longer tenors are attractive to clients in periods of high volatility, such as we have today.

The CashPro platform is also a recipient of the new initiative budget. We regularly introduce new or enhanced functionality to support our clients’ payments needs.

CashPro Forecasting, CashPro Search and CashPro Chat, which use AI, are just a few examples.

Our goal is to make it easier for our clients to conduct business and introduce tools or capabilities that take the burden off their treasury teams, so that they can focus on building their businesses.

This client-centric approach creates long-term value for our clients who demand precision, reliability and ease of use.

While our clients’ input and feedback are the most rewarding, we are also glad to receive third-party recognition. Most recently, a regional financial publication named us the Best Global Cash Management Bank in APAC and Best Global Corporate Payment Bank in APAC for 2025.

Where does India fit in the overall scheme of things, considering it has carved a niche for itself with a reasonably commanding market size?

India’s macro fundamentals are favourable for doing business. It is one of the fastest-growing major economies globally with a rising share of global trade, a rapidly formalising economy and a government focused on digital public infrastructures and financial inclusion.

India is becoming the nerve centre for global capability centres (GCCs), supply-chain diversification and digital-first business models.

We are seeing multinational clients centralise treasury and payment operations in India, making the country a strategic hub for high volume and high complexity flows.

Supply chains are shifting and India is emerging as one of the preferred alternatives in the China+1 strategy, leading to a surge in inbound investment and export-led manufacturing.

With rising e-commerce and digital platforms, both in B2C and B2B,  businesses are scaling rapidly to reach millions of consumers.

What makes India unique is the rapid evolution of payments infrastructure backed by a progressive regulatory framework: a combination of scale, digitisation and regulatory maturity making it one of the most sophisticated markets globally.

How will payments feed into your transaction business in India and therefore, the pool of low-cost deposits?

Clients in India are highly discerning. They expect banks to go beyond basic transaction handling. Our clients want integrated solutions that combine real-time liquidity management, regulatory advisory, cross-border FX and e2e (end-to-end ) transparency.

The demand for 24x7 availability of secure, cost-effective and instant cross-border transfers is growing. Payments is no longer a standalone capability. It is a strategic gateway into broader transaction banking relationships, as each payment flow is a potential entry into cash management, FX and trade business.

India’s complex landscape raises the bar for client requirements, as they are increasingly looking to consolidate these services with banking partners who can offer seamless integration along with regulatory assurance.

The outcome of serving that complexity is stickiness and high switching costs, which directly translates into stable, operational & low-cost deposit pools.

What sort of shift have you seen in the cross-border payments space, particularly in the APAC region?

There are significant shifts in the industry, with a move towards the adoption of real-time payments into cross-border flows. These are influenced and mandated by the central banks in the region.

Managing cross-border payments has always been a complex process due to varying standards, regulations, and different payment technologies across jurisdictions.

India is the largest recipient of remittances globally. It received a record $129 billion in remittances in 2024, with the United States being a major contributor.

NPCI has been actively linking UPI with international counterparts to facilitate seamless cross-border transactions. For example, the UPI-PayNow linkage between India and Singapore enables users to make instant and cost-effective cross-border funds transfers.

The RBI is assessing the feasibility of settling foreign currencies on Indian payment systems using bilateral and multilateral arrangements through global outreach of payment systems – RTGS, NEFT and UPI among others.

The central bank is also working on a digital currency in India and is exploring use cases for domestic and cross-border transactions.

Regional interoperability between schemes such as BIS-Nexus, UPI expansion with regional partners and Singapore-Thailand cooperation.... is shifting the current payments landscape across Asia Pacific.

Efforts to implement a single global payments system and the ability to manage multiple regulations in a uniform manner have been progressing, albeit slowly. We think such efforts require commercial banks, central banks, regulators and payment players to collaborate and create a cost-effective, compliant and secured network.

How important is the global payments solution to BofA’s overall business?

GPS is a key revenue generator for the bank with annual revenues in excess of $11 billion, or 10 percent of total BAC revenues in 2024, with a significant volume coming from APAC.

We process trillions of dollars in payments every day, with our CashPro platform supporting many of those payment flows.

We’re excited about our growth plans in the region and India particularly. It’s a core market for us, not only due to India’s economic potential but also the innovation in the payments space as discussed earlier.