American Express and SAP Join Forces to Launch Integrated Payment Solution

NEW YORK and WALLDORF, Germany, Oct. 18 /PRNewswire/ -- American Express and SAP AG (NYSE: SAP) today announced a joint effort to develop an integrated solution enabling SAP customers in the United States to process electronic payments more seamlessly with American Express. Through this collaboration, the companies aim to clear roadblocks that can delay or deter corporate adoption of electronic payments, such as high costs of deploying and connecting a myriad of third-party systems.

(Logo:  http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20050310/SFTH009LOGO-a)

(Logo:  http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20050310/SFTH009LOGO-a)

Companies today use many different system interfaces for electronic transactions between their banking partners' and corporate suppliers' systems as well as between their own enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. Often based on a wide variety of protocols, proprietary standards and technologies, these point-to-point interfaces can involve costly custom-developments as well as maintenance costs averaging anywhere from $50,000 to more than $500,000 for large global corporations.

Designed to help organizations drive process efficiencies without the need for large-scale, up-front development investments, the combined solution will feature a "plug-and-play" utility to enable SAP customers to adopt electronic payments quickly and easily. By integrating payments solutions with the underlying technology that powers an organization's business processes, corporations can enhance controls and optimize the timing of their payments, thereby improving their working capital. The integrated solution combines the power of the Buyer Initiated Payments solution from American Express with process integration (PI) technology from the SAP NetWeaver® technology platform. PI technology will maintain payment data integrity and the workflows and approval processes that customers are already running on SAP software.

"Corporate clients typically have  a fragmented base of treasury workstations, trading systems, accounts payable solutions, payroll processors, and other financial solutions that exchange data internally and externally with banks and corporate suppliers," said Jeanne Capachin, research vice president, IDC Financial Insights, an independent research and consulting company. "More standardization of data and better connectivity between buyers and suppliers are needed. Recognizing the pain their corporate clients experience managing multiple third-party systems, SAP and American Express are working together to increase ease of use and reduce costs for customers deploying and maintaining payment solutions."

"Automated payment solutions can be critical to companies seeking to save money, but have historically required significant investments in resources and time to implement," said Jaromir Divilek, senior vice president and general manager, American Express Global Commercial Card. "With this joint effort, we will be able to offer SAP and American Express clients a faster and more cost effective way to recognize the benefits of electronic payments.

"With its broad customer base of the world's leading companies, SAP is an ideal partner – one that shares our deep commitment to delivering business value and innovation to customers."

"SAP's global reach and business process expertise in the financial services sector put us in a unique position to help customers ease connectivity with American Express payment services," said Don Trotta, senior vice president and global head of Financial Services, SAP AG. "The collaboration with American Express underscores the proven business value of our software and further upholds our promise to help customers continually tap new potential from their SAP deployments."

As part of the agreement, American Express will license SAP NetWeaver PI technology and SAP will be the first company to deploy the new integrated Buyer Initiated Payments/PI solution. The companies plan to make the solution available in the first quarter of 2011.

Next Major Event: Sibos 2010, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, October 25 – 29

Join SAP at stand number A445 at Sibos 2010, the world's premier financial services event, to exchange insights with industry and solution experts and learn about latest developments in the SAP® for Banking portfolio.

About American Express Buyer Initiated Payments

American Express' Buyer Initiated Payments solution is an integrated web-based automation tool for companies focused on improving every aspect of the payment process.

Benefits include:

• Extend Days Payable Outstanding (DPO), or float, maximizing short-term cash
• Increase the volume of electronic payments, reducing costs associated with paper checks and supplier inquiries
• Enhance payment security, minimizing fraud
• Benefit from world-class dedicated customer service

About SAP NetWeaver® Process Integration

A core component of the SAP NetWeaver® technology platform, process integration (PI) is a middleware technology used to facilitate data exchange between a company's internal software and that of external parties. Based on service-oriented architecture (SOA), SAP NetWeaver PI serves as an integration broker to mediate exchanges between a company's own IT systems and those of external parties. It is also used to integrate and automate service-enabled business processes across such heterogeneous IT landscapes. SAP NetWeaver PI serves as an enterprise services bus (ESB) to mediate exchanges between systems using varying data formats and protocols. More than 3,500 SAP customers are using PI productively to perform application-to-application (A2A) and business-to-business (B2B) integration and to run service-enabled business processes.

About American Express Global Commercial Card

Through its Global Commercial Card group, American Express provides the Corporate Card, Corporate Purchasing Solutions, including vPayment and Buyer Initiated Payments, and other expense management services to mid-sized companies and large corporations worldwide. In the U.S., it is the leading issuer of commercial cards, serving more than 70% of the Fortune 500, as well as tens of thousands of mid-sized companies. American Express issues local-currency commercial cards in more than 40 countries, and International Dollar Corporate Cards in an additional 100+ countries. For more information, visit www.americanexpress.com/corporate.

About SAP

SAP is the world's leading provider of business software(*), offering applications and services that enable companies of all sizes and in more than 25 industries to become best-run businesses. With more than 102,500 customers in over 120 countries, the company is listed on several exchanges, including the Frankfurt stock exchange and NYSE, under the symbol "SAP." For more information, visit www.sap.com.

(*) SAP defines business software as comprising enterprise resource planning, business intelligence, and related applications.

Any statements contained in this document that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements as defined in the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Words such as "anticipate," "believe," "estimate," "expect," "forecast," "intend," "may," "plan," "project," "predict," "should" and "will" and similar expressions as they relate to SAP are intended to identify such forward-looking statements. SAP undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements. All forward-looking statements are subject to various risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from expectations. The factors that could affect SAP's future financial results are discussed more fully in SAP's filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC"), including SAP's most recent Annual Report on Form 20-F filed with the SEC. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of their dates.

Copyright © 2010 SAP AG. All rights reserved.

SAP, R/3, mySAP, mySAP.com, xApps, xApp, SAP NetWeaver and other SAP products and services mentioned herein as well as their respective logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of SAP AG in Germany and in several other countries all over the world. All other product and service names mentioned are the trademarks of their respective companies. Data contained in this document serve informational purposes only. National product specifications may vary.

SOURCE SAP AG