SAP collaborates with Visa and reveals future SAP Digital Currency Hub
In a number of recent announcements, SAP has revealed that it is significantly investing in developing new platforms and hubs to make B2B payments and cross-border transactions easier for businesses. This includes a collaboration with Visa and the launch of a ‘Test Drive’ for a new Digital Currency Hub for cross-border payments.
The recent announcement about SAP’s collaboration with Visa revealed that it was streamlining and simplifying business-to-business (B2B) payments for businesses of all sizes. Starting with the Asia-Pacific market, the collaboration aims to embed payments into the SAP ecosystem through SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP), further digitalising and speeding up B2B payments across Asia-Pacific’s supply chains.
This is the first time that Visa and SAP will join forces to explore embedded finance in the B2B market through SAP BTP to offer convenient B2B payment services to SAP customers.
SAP pinpointed the fact that many businesses in Asia Pacific, especially smaller ones, lack the resources to digitalise B2B payment acceptance and are unable to accept commercial card payments.
Through this collaboration, SAP believes that the B2B payment services running on SAP BTP will inject more automation into payments and help enterprises drive further efficiency in their purchasing as they make payments securely with just a few clicks.
“The movement of money is becoming increasingly digital, but the bulk of transformation has been focused on the consumer space,” said Stephen Karpin, Regional President, Asia Pacific, Visa. “Our collaboration with SAP is an exciting step in making B2B payments simpler and more intuitive as organisations can make payments immediately on SAP software platforms with their Visa corporate cards, instead of having to leave their existing enterprise ecosystem and navigate the different payment methods that their vendors accept. B2B payments need to be intuitive and fuss-free, so organisations can maximise time and resources on other aspects of their businesses.”
The embedded finance solution will be offered initially to SAP customers in Australia, India, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam, with plans to roll out across other markets in the region.
The other intriguing announcement came in the form of a blog which outlines the fact that SAP is piloting a new Digital Currency Hub that will enable businesses to trial cross-border payments with digital money using Circle’s USDC and EUROC stablecoins on a test blockchain network.
SAP’s Digital Payments Test Drive will provide businesses with ‘play money’ to try out the platform by paying a sample invoice that will be sent during the onboarding process.
SAP believes that cross-border payments are far too expensive, slow and non-transparent for many small and mid-sized enterprises with international business partners. It has subsequently determined that these challenges can get solved with digital money as a means of settlement, with Blockchain as the underlying technology.
“These major challenges can SAP get solved with digital money as a means of settlement and Blockchain as the underlying technology,” explained Sissi Ruthe, Product Expert, SAP. “Rather than using traditional payment rails, business partners agree on settling a cross-border transaction with USDC or EUROC, tokenized versions of the USD or Euro manifested in a blockchain as issued by Circle.”
In the future, SAP expects payments with digital money to get tightly integrated into the finance processes of underlying SAP ERP systems (SAP Business One, Business ByDesign or S/4HANA Cloud), with the aim of making it a fully automated process with autonomous reconciliation.
You can register for the Digital Currency Hub Test Drive to experience “the future of cross-border payments” now.
