Treasury Management Services in Minnesota

What a treasury relationship is worth

A business can buy payment services almost anywhere. What is harder to find is somebody who knows how your business actually moves money, and who notices when something does not look right.

That is the job. Our team sets the services up correctly the first time, revisits the setup as the business changes, and picks up the phone when something needs a decision today. The measure of the work is that your accounts stop being something you manage and become something that simply runs.

Which service solves which problem

Most businesses arrive here with a specific irritation rather than a shopping list. Start with the problem and work back to the tool.

Protecting the account: Positive Pay

Check fraud did not go away when payments went digital, and it has been getting worse rather than better. A paper check carries your account number, your routing number and a signature on the front of it, and it passes through hands you do not control. Business accounts draw the attention because the balances and the payment volumes are larger.

Positive Pay is a fraud detection tool that can help protect your company against unauthorized ACH activity, altered checks and counterfeit fraud.

Think of it the way you think about insurance. It is a line item you would rather not need, it does not make you money, and the year it earns its cost back is the year you are very glad it was already turned on. We put it in front of every business customer for that reason, and it is the part of a treasury conversation we would rather have early than after a call about a missing payment.

How check Positive Pay works, and why payee match is the part that matters

You send us a file of the checks you have issued. When a check presents against your account, we match it against that file, and the protection you get is only as strong as the fields being compared.

Three fields do the work: check number, amount and payee name. Number and amount on their own will catch a counterfeit check drawn on your account, a check number you never issued, or the same item presented twice. What they will not catch is the most common attack on a business account.

That attack is a real check of yours. Real check number, real amount, your real signature. It was intercepted somewhere between your outbox and your vendor, chemically washed, and rewritten so the payee reads a different name. Every field the bank is comparing still agrees. Without payee match, that item pays.

Payee match closes that gap. With the payee name included in the comparison, the altered check fails the match and is held as an exception before it posts. You see it, and you decide whether it pays or returns.

That is the whole difference. An altered or counterfeit check becomes a decision you make that morning instead of a loss you find during reconciliation, after the window to return the item has closed.

One practical note. The payee name has to be carried in the check issue file your accounting system produces. Confirming that it is there and mapping it correctly is part of setting Positive Pay up, so it is worth raising while you are turning the service on rather than after.

How ACH Positive Pay works

Same principle, applied to electronic debits. You tell us which originators are authorized to debit your account and within what limits. A debit from anyone else is held for your review rather than paid.

This is the control that matters most once you have given anyone the ability to pull funds from your account, whether that is a payroll provider on a reverse wire, an insurer collecting premium, or a vendor on a recurring ACH. Granting that authority is normal and it is how business gets done. ACH Positive Pay is how you keep it bounded.

Who should be looking at this

Businesses still writing checks in volume. Businesses that have authorized a third party to debit the account. And small offices where the person who writes the checks is also the person who reviews the statement, which is the most common control gap we see and among the least expensive to close.

Treasury management services

Eleven services, and most businesses use three or four of them. The list below is what Security Bank & Trust Co. offers today. If you are not sure which ones fit, that is the conversation our team is for.

Almost everything below runs through online banking, which means the practical question is usually not which service to buy but who in your office should be able to do what. Initiate but not approve. View but not move. Approve up to a limit and no further.

Getting those permissions right at setup prevents most of the problems people call us about later.

Reverse wires and wire drawdowns, explained

Reverse wires, also known as wire drawdown or draw-down requests, allow you to authorize another party to withdraw funds directly from your bank account. This other party is often your payroll provider, who needs reverse wire capabilities for accurate payroll processing.

The direction is what makes it unusual. In an ordinary wire, you instruct your bank to send money out. In a reverse wire, you have given a named party standing authorization to request the funds, and your bank releases them on that request. You are not initiating each transfer. You have decided in advance who is allowed to ask.

Where a reverse wire fits, and where an ACH debit fits

Both let someone else pull funds from your account. They are not interchangeable, and the difference usually comes down to timing, size, and whether the payment can be reversed.

The practical rule most treasury teams land on: use ACH for the recurring and the routine, and reserve the reverse wire for the payment that has to be final and has to land today.

Who uses reverse wires

Reverse wire arrangements show up wherever a trusted counterparty needs to collect on a schedule that cannot slip. The common ones we see:

• Payroll providers. The most frequent request by a wide margin. The provider funds your payroll and needs certainty about the pull date.
• Insurance carriers and premium finance companies collecting scheduled premium.
• Fuel, commodity, and agricultural input suppliers where delivery is tied to same-day settlement.
• Equipment lessors and floor plan lenders collecting on a fixed cycle.
• Title and escrow arrangements where funds must be confirmed before closing.

Four practices that change the numbers

Treasury management is critical to your business's success. It can reduce stress, improve earnings, and automate tasks to free your time for improving sales and managing margins.

A commonly overlooked source of capital for any business is its own balance sheet. Through proper treasury management planning and working capital optimization, any business will see more opportunities to achieve cash balance targets, reduce costs, increase shareholder returns and fund growth.

We all know that we want to bring in cash quickly as possible by billing promptly, following up on overdue balances consistently, and requiring upfront deposits when available. It's when we add another level of complexity that additional insights can help your business.

Use checking accounts that match your business's activities

It's a regular occurrence to see new customers come to Security Bank & Trust Co. with account products that don't match the level of activity of their business. This can result in reduced or no interest earnings and/or increased monthly fee costs. Talk with a banker to discuss which account you are in and if there are better accounts for your business. It could save you hundreds or more a year in lost interest and increased fees.

Compare business checking and savings accounts

Use ACH services to collect receivables and pay payables

ACH Origination Services are a great way to reduce the cash conversion cycle and improve your balances. Each day businesses are becoming more comfortable with and accustomed to electronic debits and credits. Talking with your recurring customers and vendors to set up these services can be a great way to reduce the manual processing times.

Use zero balance accounts and sweeps

If your business is sitting on cash and is also borrowing from a line of credit, it would make sense to work with your banker on a sweep between your line of credit and your business checking account. You'll reduce the interest you pay and over a year, this could mean hundreds or thousands to your bottom line. Likewise, tying a savings account and checking account can also be way to maximize interest earnings by concentrating balances in a savings account earning interest.

If the line of credit itself is the question rather than the sweep, start with business lending and lines of credit.

Use merchant services and business credit cards

Accepting credit cards at your business is another way to speed up funds availability and fund the growth of your business. Our Merchant Services partnership allows eligible customers with a Security business checking account to get next day availability on the credit cards they process for payment. Furthermore, working with cash back rewards credit cards are a great way to delay cash payment and earn rewards for your business.

Streamline account activities

Simplify your workflows with automatic notifications and transfers

A common practice to streamline regular and frequent activities is to set them up automatically. Using automatic notifications will reduce manual monitoring and free up time for higher value activities. We're always on the lookout for new tools and tips, so please feel free to contact our treasury management department today to learn how we can save you some time.

Examples include recurring ACH services, automatic loan payments, bill payment, ZBA/sweeps and text or email alerts on your accounts.

Manage user permissions in real time

If you're a small business owner or growing tech entrepreneur, you may have an accountant, controller or other finance manager that doesn't need the full access to your account. They may even only need view only access to your business account. At Security Bank & Trust Co., we've got you covered with treasury management services that allow you to choose who gets access and to what. Fully customer managed, you choose and manage the access to your accounts.

Deposit protection above the standard insurance limit

Standard FDIC deposit insurance covers $250,000 per depositor, per insured bank, for each account ownership category. Businesses and organizations that routinely carry balances above that limit have historically solved it by opening accounts at several banks and then managing all of them.

You do not have to. We participate in extended deposit networks that place balances across other insured institutions in amounts eligible for coverage, while you keep one relationship, one statement and one banker here. Funds stay in deposit accounts rather than in money market mutual funds, so they are not subject to floating net asset values, liquidity fees or fund liquidity gates, and they earn interest at a rate we set.

There is a local dimension worth knowing about as well. Under a dollar-for-dollar exchange with other participating institutions, the full amount placed can remain available for lending in the communities we serve, which matters to public entities and nonprofit boards that have local investment goals to satisfy.

Treasury management for Minnesota businesses

Security Bank & Trust Co. serves businesses from 21 locations across 18 Minnesota communities, from the Twin Cities metro through Carver and McLeod counties and out into Greater Minnesota. That footprint is the reason our treasury conversations tend to go differently than they do at a national processor.

The person who sets up your ACH limits is reachable. The person who approves an exception knows your business. When a wire has to go out and something is not right, you are not opening a ticket.

Find your Security Bank location

Agricultural operations

Farm and agribusiness cash cycles do not look like anyone else's. Input purchases land in concentrated windows, grain and livestock receipts arrive in others, and operating lines carry the gap between them. The treasury tools that matter most in that pattern are sweeps against the operating line, ACH origination for input suppliers and landlords, remote deposit for elevator and processor checks, and reverse wire authorization where a supplier requires same-day settlement. See our agricultural banking services.

Contractors and construction

Progress billing, retainage, and subcontractor payments make timing the whole game. ACH origination for subcontractor payments, Positive Pay on a check-heavy payables run, and remote deposit from a job trailer or a field office are the usual starting points. See construction and development financing.

Professional services and nonprofits

Practices, firms and nonprofit organizations tend to need permissions before they need volume: an office manager who should see one account and not another, a treasurer who should approve but not initiate, a board that wants a clean audit trail. User management and dual approval matter more here than transaction pricing. Professional services banking and nonprofit banking.

The team behind the accounts

Treasury management at Security Bank is led by Jillian Johnson, VP of Treasury Management and Business Banking, who has spent more than twenty years in banking and most of that career on the rules and mechanics of ACH.

What her team is known for internally is not the product list. It is the habit of finding the answer that fits one particular business rather than the answer that fits most of them, and then staying with it. That is the difference between buying a payment service and having a treasury relationship, and it is the reason this page exists at all.

You will work with people, by name, in Minnesota. Meet the team.

Treasury management questions we get asked

Treasury management services are subject to application, approval and agreement to the applicable service terms. Availability of individual services and features depends on account type and configuration. Page last reviewed July 2026.