When the first companies went live with electronic bank account management late in 2013, observers predicted that others would be quick to follow their lead. After all, what corporate treasurer who's responsible for overseeing a large number of bank accounts wouldn't want to ditch the paperwork associated with account openings, closings, and signatory changes, in favor of handling those chores with electronic messages?

A year and a half later, adoption of electronic bank account management (eBAM), which allows companies to send messages to their banks using SWIFT XML messages, remains limited.

"A lot of corporates—almost all corporates—are still in wait-and-see mode," said Bob Stark, vice president of strategy at Kyriba, which provides SaaS treasury solutions. "They've seen some progress with individual bank portals, but they have multiple banks. They're not in the place where it's quite as useful as everyone would like."