Greetings, SAP Community

We can’t wait to tell you more about the fascinating use cases that have been verified and made possible as a result of our recent co-innovation in the cryptocurrency payments area with BitPay.

Why now?

Currently, more than 18,000 companies worldwide accept cryptocurrencies as a form of payment, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, and stable coins. A mastercard survey says that 40% of customers intend to utilise digital assets for buying products and services in 2022, and the expected value of consumer bitcoin purchases is $55B by that year. Customers will increasingly expect SAP to make it possible for them to connect with cryptocurrency and Decentralized Finance (DeFi), enabling payments, financial services, and crypto accounting, as cryptocurrency becomes more established.

What is this about?

By offering easy and disruptive-free solutions for businesses to integrate crypto payment services collaboratively with partners, the co-innovation investigates how to simplify and speed up the adoption of cryptocurrencies in the enterprise area. Customers can use the SAP digital payments add-on as a central centre for payment orchestration by implementing the first use cases listed below. Here you can listen to the related demo recordings.

SAP Commerce Cloud

For a variety of payment options, SAP Commerce Cloud currently offers connection to several Payment Service Providers. In order to reconcile the transaction in SAP S/4HANA in conjunction with SAP Commerce Cloud, the SAP digital payments add-on demonstrates that it can also handle crypto payment service providers (CPSP).

The advantages of accepting bitcoin as a form of payment include that it might generate new revenue for businesses and reach a new generation of cryptocurrency owners, as 93% of cryptocurrency investors plan to use their holdings to make purchases in the future.

The high-level architecture of the suggested solution is shown below. It includes BitPay as an example and uses SAP Commerce Cloud, SAP S/4HANA Cloud, SAP digital payments add-on, and CPSP. The customer can select which wallet and cryptocurrency to use during checkout, and the CPSP payment interface is then displayed. The SAP digital payments add-on receives the transaction details from SAP Commerce Cloud and confirms the payment with the CPSP. As a result, a payment advisory is generated, which, along with the billing document and bank statement for the payment from the CPSP, may be utilised for reconciliation in SAP S/4HANA Cloud.

Figure 1 shows the cryptocurrency payment process using a crypto payment service provider and the SAP digital payments add-on.

SAP Ariba

The demo that was put into practise during the co-innovation focused on a straightforward method for accepting cryptocurrencies as a payment mechanism in SAP Ariba Guided Buying with the aim of enabling buyers to facilitate crypto payments with their fiat while also making cryptocurrency payouts to suppliers who want to be paid in cryptocurrency.

The supplier can select this CPSP as a payment option if the buyer consents to pay a supplier using a cryptocurrency of their choice through a crypto payment service provider (CPSP) like BitPay. Due to regional laws, each customer’s implementation needs to be examined separately. This enables the buyer to pay in his choice fiat currency while allowing the supplier to receive cryptocurrency payments in his preferred wallet and cryptocurrencies, such as stable coins like USDC.

This offers immediate value to vendors who may already supply decentralised money services or work with metaverse and digital twins solutions. Additionally, employing stable coins in the payment process of procurement might benefit nations where currency inflation may be rampant and open the market for suppliers where the financial infrastructure may not be well developed.

Figure 2: End-to-end Procurement Process Flow with Cryptocurrency

SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central Payroll

Employees have the option to receive a specific portion of their bonus in the cryptocurrency of their choice thanks to the co-innovation use case that was put into place. Regular wage payments fell outside the purview of this discussion because local laws must be examined for each client on an individual basis and vary from country to country. Due to the solutions’ ability to handle crypto payments more quickly and easily worldwide, even in very remote areas, international enterprises can profit from them.

The only thing the worker really needs is a cryptocurrency wallet, like MetaMask. The use case offers the business extra advantages in luring and keeping digital talent from around the world who prefer to get a percentage of their pay in cryptocurrencies. Employees who receive payment in cryptocurrency have the added freedom to keep money in digital assets without having to go through the extra effort of manually converting their fiat wage into a cryptocurrency.

According to a recent survey, more than a third of millennials and half of Generation Z would be content to get 50% of their pay in Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies, according to a report from Nasdaq.

Figure 3: Salary or Bonus Payments in Crypto with SAP SuccessFactors and Digital Payments Add-on

Why is this approach attractive?

Companies can pay with or accept cryptocurrencies without having to purchase, hold, or store them because crypto payment service providers (CPSPs), like BitPay, convert cryptocurrencies into fiat money, protecting them from the risk of a cryptocurrency’s price volatility. Additionally, this strategy lessens the impact of continuously changing restrictions because businesses can choose to simply deal in fiat money while acquiring experience with cryptocurrencies. The influence on following accounting, treasury, and tax management operations is therefore minimal. This strategy can be improved in the future by including elements like digital corporate wallets, which would allow users to receive and make payments with cryptocurrencies directly from the digital wallet. assisting businesses in meeting the rate of cryptocurrency adoption that is necessary for their operations.

Want more?

The application cases for generating direct business value for businesses and employees through cryptocurrency payments that were previously described are just the tip of the iceberg. There is opportunity to implement and test other use cases:

  • SAP Fieldglass: Pay external and contingent workforce in cryptocurrencies of their choice to attract and retain the right talent.
  • SAP Event Ticketing: Accept cryptocurrencies for tickets and events and provide fans with a new payment option of their choice.
  • SAP Commerce Cloud: Minting and paying for your NFTs with cryptocurrencies in the metaverse
  • And many more! Looking forward to your ideas.

I’m interested! To whom can I reach out?

If you’re interested in working with SAP on upcoming use cases and implementations of crypto payments, send us a quick email with your queries or areas of interest. Network for the SAP Innovation Centers: icn@sap.com

Additionally, we would be delighted to receive your opinions, queries, and comments. Feel free to leave a comment and speculate about what may happen next with us. About the future of cryptocurrencies, we are quite enthusiastic!