Asian Paints and Citi Simplify Financial Transactions with SAP Financial Services Network

SAP SE (NYSE: SAP) today announced that Asian Paints has integrated its financial transactions with Citi through SAP Financial Services Network, an integration platform designed to simplify interaction between corporations and financial institutions. With SAP Financial Services Network, Asian Paints now has a comprehensive and secure connection with Citi that standardizes financial processes and improves visibility into its financial transactions. Asian Paints is India's leading paint company and ranked among the top 10 decorative coatings companies in the world.

In today's competitive business landscape, chief financial officers and corporate treasurers require a clear and seamless integration with their banking partners that removes manual processes associated with transactions and provides visibility into cash flow. SAP Financial Services Network is a testament to SAP and Citi's pledge to deliver the innovation and agility that companies need to defeat complexity and complete highly sophisticated tasks. The integration with Citi simplifies the intricacy of company-based banking services and makes it easier for businesses to connect their payment systems with the bank, saving these customers time and money. It helps standardize banking operations to improve financial workflows, mitigate risk and track global cash.

"As our business grows, it is becoming increasingly important to capitalize on efficiencies wherever possible, particularly when it comes to back-end processes and financial management," said Harish Lade, General Manager-Systems, Asian Paints. "SAP Financial Services Network has enabled us to work seamlessly with Citi and the platform is now set to help connect other corporate banks on many financial integration functions, which are core to the success of Asian Paints."

Recognizing efficiency and visibility as key challenges for many organizations when it comes to financial management, Citi has shown its commitment to resolving these issues as one of the first co-innovators and multinational banks for SAP Financial Services Network.

"We are very pleased to have partnered with both Asian Paints and SAP to create a new, transformational integration solution that combines the strength and the depth of our global network and banking services with the integration solutions from SAP based on the in-memory computing technology of the SAP HANA platform," said Hubert JP Jolly, global head, Channel and Enterprise Services, Citi Treasury and Trade Solutions. "At Citi our digital strategy is to focus on a seamless and consistent cross-channel client experience, and the partnership with SAP on SAP Financial Services Network is an excellent example of this."

Hosted by SAP as an on-demand offering, SAP Financial Services Network uniquely positions banking institutions to deliver business applications in a comprehensive and connected way. With standardized integration and value-added services currently limited in the banking industry, the network tackles this issue head on by improving the way companies and corporate treasurers communicate with their banks. SAP Financial Services Network offers multiple services over a single channel. These include process integration between financial institutions and their corporate customers, enrichment and easy exchange of financial messages, such as payments, collections and statements and a way to connect to multiple banks through the same network without on-site hardware or custom development.

With a growing number of participant banks and corporations, including DBS Bank, which recently joined the program, SAP Financial Services Network continues to expand in both partner and customer adoption.

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