Case Study: Zalando Payments achieves real-time BaFin safeguarding compliance and 70% efficiency gain with SAP HANA

How Can a Custom Financial Model Aid Compliance While Improving Financial Strategy

Zalando Payments GmbH (ZPS), the payments and factoring arm of fashion retailer Zalando SE, needed to meet BaFin’s safeguarding rules by calculating how much third‑party money it holds at any moment across more than 185 million orders a year, 20 payment methods and 17 countries. The challenge was to build a stable, scalable daily monitoring capability that ensured regulatory compliance while also improving financial planning and liquidity management.

Working with SAP, ZPS implemented a custom guarantee‑monitoring model on SAP Business Technology Platform with SAP S/4HANA, SAP BW/4HANA, SAP HANA and SAP Analytics Cloud, using near‑real‑time data replication and automated calculations to produce daily guarantee figures and interactive dashboards. The solution delivered full daily transparency, about a 70% efficiency gain versus the prior method, stronger compliance with BaFin, deeper insights into liquidity and financing, and the foundation for predictive forecasting and new business opportunities.

Zalando