By Liz Hoffman

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. -- the go-to bank for complex trades and high-stakes mergers -- is trying to become a player in the staid business of managing corporate cash.

The firm will soon begin marketing new bank accounts for corporate treasurers and chief financial officers to manage and move their cash. It is Chief Executive David Solomon's latest move to transform the bank, and it comes during a time of economic uncertainty and market turmoil that has clouded the outlook for companies big and small.

Goldman is taking on the global commercial banks that dominate the business. Citigroup Inc., JPMorgan Chase & Co. and HSBC Holdings PLC, among others, move trillions of dollars for giant corporations and small businesses to help them meet payroll, pay vendors and manage global currency risk.

Banks earned $32 billion from providing such services last year, according to research firm Coalition. Citigroup, one of the largest, earned $10.2 billion in treasury services and had $571 billion in corporate customer deposits in that business as of March 31.

The business relies on global commerce and so has been hard-hit by the pandemic and central bankers' efforts to contain it by cutting interest rates. Revenue from cash-management and trade finance fell 6% in the first quarter, according to Coalition, and is likely to be squeezed further as low interest rates pinch the profits from lending out idle corporate cash.

Goldman is betting that a clean-sheet approach will cut costs and improve the product, and that its tight relationships with corporate management will help its bankers sell it. Hari Moorthy, who is running the business for Goldman, said treasury functions still depend on paper trails. It can take three months or more for companies to get accounts up and running, he said.

"I talk to treasurers and they tell me they have teams of 20 people who do nothing but FedEx documents to banks," said Mr. Moorthy, who returned to Goldman in 2018 after seven years at JPMorgan. An engineer by training, he now oversees a team of about 350 people, and hosts meditation sessions for many of them on Fridays.

Goldman's effort, which runs entirely on Amazon.com Inc.'s cloud servers, resembles its push into consumer banking, where it has amassed $60 billion in deposits and $6.8 billion in personal and credit-card loans without a traditional branch network. Instead, consumers can open accounts online with a few clicks.

Goldman was its own first customer, a bit of eating-one's-own-cooking that it hopes will reassure customers wary about signing on with a newcomer. The first payment crossed the new system one morning last July, Mr. Moorthy said, a $43.36 company cellphone bill to Verizon.

Since then, it has been operating in stealth mode, and now has 175 corporate clients and about $20 billion in deposits, Mr. Moorthy said. Dozens of those new customers opened their accounts when they drew down lines of credit with Goldman this March and April, bankers said, making the business one of few to benefit from the turmoil caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

Cash-management businesses earn money in three ways: by lending out corporate deposit dollars, through payment fees, and by charging customers to exchange currencies -- for example, a U.S. company that wants to use dollars to pay a vendor in France will pay more than the market rate for euros. Goldman is currently paying between 0.10% and 0.35% interest on its customers' deposits; companies, unlike consumers, can negotiate for a better deal.

Goldman aims to bring in $50 billion of deposits and $1 billion in annual revenue from cash-management by 2025, President John Waldron told investors in January. As in consumer banking -- and contrary to its deal-making businesses, where it aims to be No. 1 -- Goldman is setting modest goals of just a few percentage points of global market share.

Like its young consumer business, treasury services carries some risk of failure. The bank has made its name, and most of its money over the years, on episodic but lucrative deals like megamergers and "elephant" trades. It is now asking clients to trust it to handle millions of mundane transactions, the failure of any one of which could mean corporate employees or vendors don't get paid.

"It requires doing many small things well," said Dan Dees, Goldman's co-head of investment banking, "but that's what we've always done."

His investment bankers, in addition to pitching corporate CEOs on deals, are now courting finance departments and treasurers. He said the effort dovetails with Goldman's push to do more lending, particularly on acquisitions on which it advises, and to court midsize companies.

Write to Liz Hoffman at liz.hoffman@wsj.com