With tariff threats mounting, U.S. Bank is pushing a payment strategy to enable businesses to operate internationally while storing funds inside the U.S. “Tariffs are the most obvious thing that’s been in the news. But the other big issue is the weakening dollar,” Tarek El-Yafi, head of U.S. Bank Global Transaction Services, told American Banker. “That’s a double whammy.” U.S. Bank has built what it calls a “suite” of foreign currency accounts, which enable businesses to hold funds in up to 23 foreign currencies, such as euros, pounds, yen and Australian dollars, while keeping those balances in the U.S. in FDIC-insured accounts. The bank says this enables companies to manage payments to and from suppliers, minimizing currency conversions and foreign exchange volatility. “You can derisk that cash by bringing it back into the U.S.” El-Yafi said. U.S. Bank is particularly focusing on U.S. based companies with cross-border payment needs that want to avoid managing accounts in non-U.S. jurisdictions. Banks and fintechs have applied numerous methods in recent years to enable smaller businesses to move funds between countries while avoiding third parties such as correspondent banks, which add fees for payment processing and heighten foreign exchange risk given the longer settlement times. To avoid this, firms such as Ripple and the bank-led R3 blockchain consortium use distributed ledgers to sell fast processing and lower FX risk for cross-border payments. U.S. Bank is relying on its own scale and ability to support multiple currencies inside the U.S. to sell small businesses on the ability to use a U.S.-regulated and insured bank to execute payments directly in other countries in local currencies without converting U.S. dollars beforehand. The bank is also offering a reporting dashboard to consolidate visibility across global banking accounts. In addition to economic challenges such as higher prices for international supply chains, the bank is bracing its clients for potential retaliatory moves from other countries that may complicate working with banks based outside of the U.S. “You don’t know what these countries are going to do,” El-Yafi said. “They make it harder to do business in that country. “What will that do for middle-market businesses? Will there be a risk of cash being trapped outside of the U.S.?” El-Yafi said. U.S. Bank is also backing up earlier investments in business payments technology. The bank in July began offering working capital loans to business clients through a partnership with fintech Liberis, countering payment firms such as PayPal and Block that use future payment flows to offer fast decisions on short-term loans to merchants. In another July partnership, U.S. Bank teamed with the blockchain-powered WaveBL platform to streamline trade finance by encrypting digital document transfers between trade partners and their banks, reducing the need for paper. And earlier in 2025.