Digitalization of Businesses

The digital economy is putting pressure on finance departments around the globe.
This is the new normal of volatility - it is not just in the traditional areas of currency exchange risk and commodity prices, but also includes macroeconomic volatility and rapidly changing consumer preferences. In addition, tax policy volatility and complex regulatory requirements are challenging finance departments to provide ever deeper and ever more real-time information.
The second challenge is the proliferation of business model change, across all industries. Industry lines are blurring and the number of mergers and acquisitions continues to grow, becoming a standard model for achieving growth and innovation. Disruptive competitors are entering the market at an increasing pace. The emergence of digitally-enabled business models is forcing finance to become ever more agile and proactive.
As a result, finance is being asked to drive strategy in a whole new different way - providing real-time insight and proactive advice on investments, mergers and acquisitions, and on business model transformation.
In addition, finance is being asked to support the process of digital transformation across the enterprise. The sum of these changes has the potential to impact the entire financial value chain. Everything from how we bill, collect, report, and pay taxes, to how we plan for and control the business is going digital and real-time.
Enterprises have realized that finance transformation will help drive innovation and manage this volatility.

Real-time payments without the SAP digital payments add-on can be costly and tedious. The following constraints result from legacy system landscapes.
Payment Service Provider (PSP) Integration- Custom specific implementation and maintenance for each PSP
- Technical lock-in
- Restricted to credit card payments
- Further digital payment methods only via custom implementation
- Critical credit card data stored in ERP - risk of data loss
- High costs for PCI DSS certification
No automatic post processing in accounting, high manual effort and error-prone
SAP Digital Payments Add-on: Features

The digital payments add-on is a cloud service that allows companies to process incoming credit card payments and other real-time payment methods in a secure and efficient way. This helps to significantly reduce cash reconciliation efforts for all companies running any variant of SAP order/sale-to-cash processes (B2B, B2C, POS, web shops, and so on) who need to offer their customers flexibility and access to multiple digital payment methods.
Customers implementing the SAP digital payments add-on should also consider:
- The customer needs to license the SAP digital payments add-on (which is transaction-based).
- SAP S/4HANA Cloud, SAP S/4HANA On-Premise and several other SAP solutions are integrated out-of-the-box.
- Integration with the PSPs is available out-of-the-box. The customer must have a contract with the PSP(s) of their choice.

For your IT department there are many benefits to adopting this standard approach:
- Predictable setup and operation costs for integrating PSPs by using SAP services to link to world-class PSPs and digital payment processors
- Avoid expensive PCI compliance audits by using standard connection methods that keep sensitive data out of your system.
- Simplified operations - Services provided by one service provider (SAP) across your IT landscape - SAP takes care of all format changes
- Future proof:
- As your landscape changes, the links to digital payment methods stay stable
- As new payment methods and providers evolve, SAP keeps your payment processes up-to-date
- Technical integration to world-class PSPs and digital payment processors - the list is growing!
- Tokenization - With the tokenization approach, sensitive data is not stored in the SAP system, thus avoiding the need for PCI compliance audits.
- Stable and harmonized APIs (not dependent on PSP integration methods) to integrate non-SAP solutions. One solution that fits your whole landscape
- Multiple backend systems supported
For your finance department, there are many benefits to adopting this standard approach:
- Significant reduction in reconciliation effort of digital payments with open items because of continual process oversight
- Increased choice of digital payment options for customers and sales teams. Customers and the business with options to support various cards and digital payment methods.
- Insulates finance systems from changes as digital payment methods evolve - Always be up to date with the latest digital payment methods without changes to backend SAP systems
- Automated reconciliation - The manual effort of post-processing of bank statements items with open items is significant due to granularity changes between items, payments, and statements. When information granularity changes, SAP keeps the information flow stable to allow automated reconciliation of payments with open items.
- Provide additional business value at post-payment activities, such as advice handling
- Provide the business with options to support various cards and digital payment methods. SAP service provides standard links to PSPs and digital payment methods, allowing all regions to participate in digital payment processing
Payment Card Security

The SAP digital payments add-on is compliant with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS).
- Only PCI DSS-certified external partners (PSPs) process and store the original card data.
- The credit card number is replaced by the PSP with a token.
- The token is the only identification that is processed and stored in the SAP software.
For more information, see the PCI DSS Attestation of Compliance and SAP Trust Center.

The tokenized credit card details (including card holder) are stored on behalf of the consumer application.
- The deletion of data after it has been used has to be requested by the consumer application.
- The consumer application can read the card data to provide disclosure functionality.
- SAP digital payments add-on users have no read access to the data.
- No logging of read accesses from the consumer application is required.
The credit card token is stored in a mapping table (internal and external tokens).
- Deletion of data is triggered by the deletion API from the consumer application.
- SAP digital payments add-on users have no read access to the data.
The credit card token is part of any transaction processed and is stored in the SAP digital payments add-on.
- Automatic deletion ensures that the data is deleted after use.
- SAP digital payments add-on users have no read access to the data.