<![CDATA[The transformation of the global payment system is entering a new chapter as central banks expand their exploration of Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) in various jurisdictions. Multinational corporations (MNCs), as the most intensive actors in cross-border transactions, have the potential to be one of the most affected parties to this transformation, but the corporate finance literature on this issue still lags behind the monetary-macro literature. This article aims to analyze the impact of CBDC-based payment transformation on MNCs' financial efficiency, particularly on the dimensions of transaction costs, completion speed, working capital management, and exchange rate risk mitigation. The research uses a narrative-thematic literature review approach on 20 scientific and institutional sources in 2020-2026, combined with case studies of cross-border CBDC projects (Project m-Bridge, Digital Euro, e-CNY) and Indonesian contexts (Garuda Project). The results show that cross-border CBDC settlement architecture has the potential to cut the banking correspondent layer, reduce transaction costs by about half of conventional costs, and accelerate settlement from days to seconds, which would theoretically shorten cash conversion cycles and lower the need for MNCs' multi-currency presaution cash balances. However, these benefits are still prospective due to the limitations of interjurisdictional interoperability, the geopolitical fragmentation of multi-CBDC platforms, and Indonesia's adoption stage which is still at the proof-of-concept level. The main contribution of this article is a conceptual framework that links the design characteristics of CBDCs with transaction cost theory and working capital management theory to explain the mechanism of improving the financial efficiency of MNCs, a link that has not been systematically elaborated on in previous literature that tends to focus on the implications of monetary policy and banking stability. The study recommends that further research use enterprise-level transaction data once cross-border CBDC adoption reaches commercial scale.Keywords— CBDC, cross-border payments, financial efficiency, multinational corporations, working capital.]]>
