Bitpanda bolters compliance through one unified platform for intake to pay

The challenge

A rapidly scaling enterprise outgrows its fractured workflows

When Damyan Grozdanov joined Bitpanda’s procurement team, the company was on an incredible trajectory—evolving from a fintech startup into a mature financial institution with the company goal of being the leading European crypto platform. At the time, Bitpanda relied on a custom procure-to-pay system built within Jira. While functional, the system required extensive manual effort and it was becoming increasingly clear that they needed a better solution.

“Requests were raised in Jira, but you had to manually loop in a stakeholder and navigate scattered processes across NetSuite and other systems,” said Damyan. “It worked, but it required several extra steps and created friction between teams.”

Once the request was approved and PO was created, procurement had to manually update the status in the Jira ticket. When accounting received and booked an invoice through NetSuite, there was no way to track in Jira if the invoice had been booked or not.

These inefficiencies of all these sub-processes weren’t just time-consuming and error-prone—they were risky. With complex regulations like the MaRisk in Germany’s BaFin in place (plus several upcoming changes to the regulatory landscape in Europe), Bitpanda’s compliance framework needed to level up to support the company’s ambition to dominate the European market and retain its reputation as one of the safest and most strictly regulated trading platforms in the industry.

“Germany is the biggest market in Europe, and it’s stringently regulated. We believe that regulatory compliance is key to the company we are building, and ensuring we are compliant is critical to maintaining our reputation.”

The solution

Enhancing efficiency and compliance with Zip

Bitpanda implemented Zip in late 2023 to replace its fragmented procurement system with a centralized, automated solution. The transition was rapid and Bitpanda was able to go live with Zip’s full intake-to-procure and procure-to-pay solutions in under eight weeks.

For Damyan’s team, Zip wasn’t just a new tool–it was a new way of working. “With Zip, we centralized procurement into one system, providing full visibility into every step of the process,” Damyan explained. “This wasn’t just about automation—it was about enabling compliance and building trust across teams.”

Zip allowed the team to design workflows that adhered to the strictest standards, such as Germany’s MaRisk framework and the upcoming MiCA rules for crypto-assets. These workflows ensured that every procurement request followed a consistent path, incorporating necessary due diligence checks and approvals.

“With fresh MiCA licences from Germany’s BaFin and Malta’s MFSA, we’re not just leading Europe’s regulated crypto space - we’re defining it. These licences mean we can operate seamlessly across the EU, setting the gold standard for compliance. And with Zip in our corner, every procurement process runs like clockwork, keeping us ahead of evolving regulations while reinforcing trust at every turn.”

The team’s focus on reporting and SLAs also evolved with Zip. “We use Zip’s reporting and analytics monthly to capture year-to-date results, benchmark against past performance, and post updates in an internal bulletin. This oversight allows us to identify and address issues, such as unrealistic SLAs, ensuring processes remain efficient and adaptable.”

The result

In its first year using Zip, Bitpanda’s procurement team processed over 2,400 requests and managed €156 million in spend while maintaining compliance with Europe’s most stringent regulatory requirements and cutting down cycle times to just 18 days.

A standout improvement has been the ability for Damyan’s team to independently adapt Zip’s no-code workflows to accommodate new requirements. “With Jira, we had to raise a ticket with the IT team who would try to implement it, and it took much longer.”

Zip also centralized and simplified vendor management, creating a single source of truth for all vendor-related activities. “You see the whole thing—purchase orders, spend, the business owner, and the audit trail,” Damyan explained. This comprehensive view made it possible for the team to efficiently manage over 2,500 vendors.

“Every interaction that we have with an external company goes through us,” said Damyan. “Zip provides the visibility and structure we need to manage these relationships effectively.”