SAP says its Store has supported more than 50,000 transactions and gives partners access to more than 440,000 SAP customers (SAP). Those numbers describe SAP’s marketplace. They say nothing about how many customers any single payments partner won there.
My view is simple. For a payments company, an ERP marketplace listing alone is a weak distribution strategy. The ERP decides which payments product sits inside the workflow. Other payments companies may have a catalog page, but the listing itself does not prove the ERP sourced a customer.
The ERPs pick the default
SAP has its own payments arm, SAP Taulia. Its virtual cards are built into SAP S/4HANA and SAP Ariba Buying (J.P. Morgan). A finance team on SAP does not need to browse a store for a card program. It already sits in the screen where invoices get approved.
Oracle NetSuite picked BILL. On October 7, 2025, the two announced that BILL-powered payments would run inside NetSuite Intelligent Payment Automation, fully embedded in the system of record (BILL). Every other AP payments company selling to NetSuite customers now competes with an option already in the product.
The ERP also decides when an integration ends. Sage Intacct’s 2026 R1 release notes say Vendor Payments powered by CSI ended August 7, 2026. They tell customers to explore alternatives with their account manager or partner (Sage). Customers using that integration had to move. The decision was Sage’s.
The partner slot is a contract, not a moat
Even the chosen partner holds its slot on the ERP’s terms. Placement, data access and renewal depend on an agreement with the ERP. When an integration ends, customers pick another supported option or rebuild the connection themselves. How much volume the partner keeps depends on how many of those customers it knows directly.
The SAP Store is adding services of its own. Its new private offers let SAP handle invoicing, indirect tax and payment reconciliation on eligible deals, while the partner stays seller of record (SAP). That is useful plumbing. It also places SAP inside the transaction flow of eligible deals closed there.
Why I look past the listing
Before founding Finexio, I worked on software that told a large organization who to pay and how much. I kept asking why the last mile still ran through printed checks when the instruction and the bank relationship already existed. Directing the payment was the software. Executing it was the business. I then spent 11 years building Finexio to more than $7 billion in annual payment volume and a network of over 500,000 suppliers (Fern Capital).
Follow a supplier payment after the ERP approves the invoice. Someone verifies the supplier, picks a rail, moves the money, fixes the failure and posts the result to the ledger. The ERP owns the approval at the start and the ledger at the end. The payments company earns its keep in the middle.
That middle is where defensibility lives. A supplier network a rival cannot rebuild quickly. Risk data that improves every payment. Exception handling that works at 2 a.m. Reconciliation history no customer wants to recreate. None of it comes with a marketplace badge. I would change my view of the channel if a payments company showed that store-sourced customers signed without its sales team, produced more retained gross profit per acquisition dollar than direct customers, and stayed after the initial contract. SAP’s aggregate Store numbers do not answer those questions for any one partner.
The same split shows up elsewhere. Intuit lets QuickBooks actions run inside outside AI tools while it keeps the ledger and the money movement (Fern Capital). And when software gets cheaper, the fight moves to who owns the customer.
What I would do running a payments company today
- Treat the listing as a checkout lane, not a pipeline. Count customers who found you in the store and signed without your sales team. Report that number on its own.
- Read the partner agreement before you celebrate it. Placement, exclusivity, data portability and the termination clause decide what the slot is worth.
- Sell where the default stops. NetSuite’s BILL-powered module requires a U.S. business subsidiary, pays vendors in the United States, and settles bill payments in U.S. dollars only (Oracle). Cross-border payables are open ground.
- Invest in what an ERP cannot switch off. Supplier enrollment, bank partnerships and direct CFO relationships.
The ERP owns the doorway. Build the business that owns the room.