Optimal Time-Varying Cash Allocation

Abstract: A payment is the most fundamental aspect of a trade that involves funds. In recent years, the development of new payment services has accelerated significantly as the world has moved further into the digital era. This transition has led to an increased demand of digital payment solutions that can handle trades across the world. As trades today can be agreed at any time wherever the payer and payee are located, the party that mediates payments must at any time to be available in order to mediate an agreed exchange. This requires the payment service provider to always have funds available in the required countries and currencies in order for trades to always be available. This thesis concerns how a payment service provider can reallocate capital in a cost efficient way in order for trades to always be available. Traditionally, the reallocation of capital is done in a rule-based manner, which discard the cost dimension and thereby only focus on the reallocation itself. This thesis concerns methods to optimally reallocate capital focusing on the cost of transferring capital within the network. Where the concerned methods has the potential of transferring capital in a far more cost efficient way. When mathematically formulating the reallocation decisions as an optimization problem, the cost function is formulated as a linear program with both Boolean and real constraints. This impose non-feasibility of locating the optimal solution using traditional methods for linear programs, why developed traditional and more advanced methods were used. The model was evaluated based on a large number of simulations in comparison with the performance of a rule-based reallocation system. The developed model provides a significant cost reduction compared to the rule-based approach and thereby outperforms the traditional reallocation system. Future work should focus on expanding the model by broadening the available transfer options, by increasing the considered uncertainty via a bayesian treatment and finally by considering all cost aspects of the network.