Once we have won a mandate to act as a corporate banker, the first product all corporate relationships require is a bank account.

So we start off with a basic, current or checking account facility.

This may be in just one currency or across several currencies, or it may even be several accounts across many countries.

The purpose of the bank account is to enable the corporate to process receipts and initiate payments.

The bank needs to make sure that all this banking is visible to the corporate and that they are able to reconcile the transaction flows efficiently and invest any surplus cash they have to maximize returns to the business.

Cash management solutions may allow money to be actually, or notionally moved between different accounts to ensure positive cash balances are held in the highest interest earning account possible and the negative balances or deficits are minimized.

Or if this isn't possible that the bank lends money at the lowest available rate to the clients, the more complex a corporate client's bank account structure is, say, across currencies and geographies.

The more complex the solution offered by the corporate bank will be cash management services will also include solutions around payment transfer fees.

The more predictable the payment, the lower the cost.

But banks do offer payment solutions for more urgent, international or very large transfers of money, which incur higher costs.

The aim of all the payment solutions is to facilitate the smooth transfer of money into the right account at the right time as cheaply as possible.