Dive Brief:
- SAP rolled out a new cloud-based payments solution to beef up its Commerce Cloud vertical Thursday. The composable, no-code/low-code framework aims to streamline third-party payment service integrations and help customers simplify their retail tech stacks, according to the announcement.
- The enterprise software giant intensified efforts to shift customers to cloud-native, SaaS-based solutions in January, when it revamped its ERP migration incentive and support programs.
- The payments solution, currently in beta and due for general release in the second half of the year, is part of a broader cloud push, Riad Hijal, global head and VP of commerce, told CIO Dive. “In general, as it relates to our CX portfolio and commerce in particular, our strategy for over five years now has been to be 100% in on cloud,” he said.
Dive Insight:
Easing customer payment processes drives revenue, particularly in retail-focused industries. But a proliferation of tech-driven payment options saddles CIOs with a muddle of mismatched tools and services, according to Aptos and Bain & Company.
SAP’s open payment framework integrates with payments service providers Stripe, Adyen, WorldPay and Airwallex out of the box. The solution’s composable architecture lets users add other third-party providers with minimum tooling, reducing the need for engineering customizations, Hijal said.
Since the end of 2022, SAP’s commerce software innovations have been exclusively focused on cloud. The provider still has several hundred customers running on-prem retail systems and coding bespoke solutions, but it’s a shrinking cohort, according to Hijal.
“If you’re Walmart or Amazon and you have buildings full of engineers, go for it,” Hijal said.
For most companies, modernization means simplifying processes, streamlining the tech stack and implementing what Aptos calls a unified tech strategy. Spending resources on solutions that already exist in the cloud has become less appealing.
“We're moving into a world where services tend to be more self-contained, more modular and 100% API enabled,” Hijal said.
