Two days at the DACT Treasury Fair done.
For me the main reason to go is simple: treasurers talking to treasurers.
No panel slides, vendor pitches, or whitepapers ever beat the value of hallway conversations. Those informal chats are often the best way to understand the real sentiment in the market: what people are actually working on, what’s going well, what’s painful, and which projects keep appearing again and again across different companies.
In the end, people determine the success of any initiative anyway. A tool is only as good as the fool using it, or the one who implemented it in the first place. I’m not calling anyone a fool, of course; the point is simply that it all starts and ends with people.
Here are some things that stood out this year:
AI is still everywhere
But the conversation is slowly improving. Less “AI will revolutionise everything tomorrow”, more actual use cases. That’s progress. Treasury is starting to move from curiosity to practical experimentation.
At the same time, it was good to see sessions about the unsexy but critical basics:
TMS implementations, liquidity optimisation, and working capital improvements. These projects might not make headlines, but they still create the biggest impact in treasury departments.
Another topic that clearly gained traction: stablecoins.
I didn’t attend all those sessions, but the number of discussions around them definitely increased. My expectation is that this topic will grow significantly in 2026. With several clients, we already see concrete use cases emerging, especially around faster cross-border payments and repatriating trapped cash. Book a meeting HERE to brainstorm about your use cases.
And then the closing keynote by Dominique Schreinemachers: “The Art of Awareness.”
Her story about the helicopter attack in Afghanistan, supported by the actual footage of the incident, was intense. A powerful reminder that leadership, teamwork, and preparation matter most when things go wrong. They survived because of years of training and absolute trust in each other.
Different context than treasury, of course, but the core lesson is surprisingly similar:
Under pressure, you fall back on the systems and teamwork you built before the crisis.
Overall: great event, good conversations, and a lot of familiar faces. If we didn’t manage to connect at the fair, let’s catch up soon. Treasury conversations never really end anyway. Contact us
