If you work in finance, tax, or IT, you’ve probably heard Peppol mentioned in the context of e-invoicing mandates, VAT in the digital age, or ‘the thing we need to connect to Europe’. Peppol usually pops up whenever companies start looking to automate invoicing↗ across borders.
At its core, Peppol is two things:
- A set of standards for structured business documents (especially invoices)
- A federated network that lets those documents flow securely between buyers, suppliers, platforms, and public authorities
Peppol originated as a solution to differing invoicing standards between organisations, industries, and countries. When invoice structures and workflows are misaligned, it increases error rates and causes extra work for finance teams.
Instead of every organisation inventing its own formats and integrations↗, Peppol offers a common language and shared infrastructure. This article explains what Peppol is, how it works in practice, where it’s used, and how your business can connect to it.
What is Peppol?
Peppol stands for Pan-European Public Procurement Online. It began as an EU project to simplify cross-border public procurement↗. Suppliers that sold to governments in multiple countries had to deal with different formats, portals, and technical requirements. Peppol’s answer was to standardise both the content of documents and the way they move between parties.
On the content side
Peppol defines how an electronic invoice should be structured and validated. The key specification here is Peppol BIS Billing 3.0 which describes which fields an invoice must contain (for example tax details, totals, buyer and seller identifiers), how those fields are formatted, and what business rules apply.
BIS Billing 3.0 is aligned with the European e-invoice standard EN 16931 and implemented in UBL 2.1, so software on both sides can rely on a consistent structure.
On the transport side
Instead of relying on email or one-off electronic data interchange (EDI) connections, Peppol uses a network of certified service providers called Access Points. Each organisation chooses an Access Point, connects its systems once, and then uses that connection to exchange documents with any other participant on the network. The underlying idea is ‘connect once, reach many’.
How the Peppol network works
Now on to the more technical details. The Peppol network follows what’s known as the four-corner model. Imagine it as a postal system for structured data:
- Corner 1 – Sender: the supplier’s system (ERP↗, accounting, AP/AR tool).
- Corner 2 – Sender’s Access Point: the certified gateway that injects the invoice into the Peppol network.
- Corner 3 – Receiver’s Access Point: the gateway chosen by the buyer.
- Corner 4 – Receiver: the buyer’s system where the invoice is delivered and processed.
The sender and receiver are free to pick different Access Points. Because all Access Points follow the same technical standards and governance rules, a document created in one system can be delivered and processed in another without custom, one-off integrations.
But to make this work, Peppol needs two more things: a way to identify participants, and a way to discover how to reach them.
- A Peppol ID (also called a Participant ID) is the address of an organisation on the network. It’s usually based on an existing identifier such as a VAT number or company registration number, combined with a scheme code that indicates what kind of ID it is.
- A central Service Metadata Locator (SML) keeps track of which registry knows about which participant. Those registries are called Service Metadata Publishers (SMPs), and they store technical details such as which document types a participant can receive and via which Access Point.
When your Access Point needs to send an invoice, it takes the Peppol ID of the buyer, uses the SML to find the right SMP, fetches the buyer’s capabilities from that SMP, and then sends the document to the buyer’s Access Point using the AS4 protocol over a secure TLS channel.
While this probably sounds confusing, it’s all wrapped within a user-friendly layer known as the Peppol Directory. This is a public directory that acts like a phone book for the network. AP and AR teams can look up companies that are Peppol-enabled, check which documents they can receive, and verify their Peppol IDs. It doesn’t perform routing itself, but it makes discovery and onboarding much easier.
A typical Peppol invoice flow
In practice, sending a Peppol invoice looks something like this:
- Your ERP or invoicing solution generates the invoice and maps it to Peppol BIS Billing 3.0.
- The system checks that mandatory fields are present and totals are correct.
- The invoice is handed to your Access Point, which validates the structure again.
- The Access Point uses SML and SMP to find the buyer’s endpoint and supported formats.
- It sends the invoice via AS4 to the buyer’s Access Point.
- The buyer’s Access Point passes the invoice into the buyer’s AP or ERP system and returns a status (accepted, rejected, error).
Peppol vs PDFs and traditional electronic data interchange
Given all that complexity, you may be asking why Peppol is necessary when you can simply email a PDF.
The main issue with PDF invoices is that they’re not machine-readable in a structured way. Someone still has to key in or OCR the data, which is slow and error-prone. It’s harder to enforce consistent validation rules and easier for fraudsters to tamper with invoices or spoof email addresses. From a control and audit perspective, PDFs scattered across inboxes are not ideal.
Traditional EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) solves some of these issues by exchanging structured data directly between systems, but it typically relies on point-to-point integrations.
Peppol combines the structure of EDI with the openness of a shared network. Because Access Points all use the same document specifications and transport protocols, you integrate once and then reuse that integration for many partners.
For finance teams that means fewer errors and disputes, faster approvals, and less manual data entry. For IT, it means fewer bespoke integrations to build and maintain.
Where Peppol is used today
Peppol’s strongest foothold is still in Europe, where many EU and EEA countries use it for business-to-government (B2G). Some countries are extending this to business-to-business (B2B) transactions as well. The most notable example is Belgium which has an upcoming B2B e-invoicing mandate that will use Peppol BIS and the Peppol network as its default rails.
However, Peppol is no longer just a European story. Singapore and Malaysia have rolled out national e-invoicing frameworks that rely on Peppol. Australia and New Zealand use Peppol for trans-Tasman e-invoicing with local adaptations.
Within the EU, the VAT in the Digital Age (ViDA) initiative is also relevant. One of ViDA’s goals is to modernise VAT reporting, including more frequent or near real-time sharing of transaction data with tax authorities. Peppol is being piloted as one way to move that data securely and consistently.
Why your business should care
As we mentioned before, many companies encounter Peppol because of a specific compliance trigger. This may be a public sector customer that only accepts Peppol invoices, or a national B2B mandate that mentions Peppol by name, or kicking off a cross border invoicing project.
But there are broader reasons to take it seriously:
- Finance and operations: Peppol enables much higher levels of automation. Invoices arrive in a structured, validated format, so your AP system can match them against purchase orders and receipts with fewer exceptions.
That shortens processing times, improves visibility on liabilities, and reduces the manual workload on your team. The structured nature of the data and the security of the network also reduce the risk of fraud and accidental errors. When combined with AI accounts payable workflows↗, you can save huge amounts of time in your AP operations. - Compliance: Peppol aligns with standards that many tax administrations and regulators are backing, especially in Europe. It doesn’t replace local tax rules, but it gives you an infrastructure that’s compatible with how many e-invoicing and digital reporting regimes are being built.
- IT and infrastructure: Peppol is also attractive because it’s vendor-neutral and scalable. Instead of maintaining dozens of bilateral EDI connections, you can centralise connectivity through one or a small number of Access Points. Because the standards are open and governed by OpenPeppol, you are less tightly locked into a single vendor, and extending your setup to new countries or document types becomes easier.
How to connect to Peppol
There are a few different ways to connect to Peppol. Which one you choose depends on a few different factors:
- Using Peppol via existing software. Many modern ERPs, accounting tools and AP automation platforms already include Peppol connectivity, either directly or through a partnered Access Point. In these cases, enabling Peppol is often as simple as activating a module, going through onboarding, and running tests.
- Integrate with a dedicated Access Point. If you have multiple ERPs, high volumes, or complex integration requirements, it may be best to working directly with a Peppol Access Point provider. In this case you’ll connect via APIs or file exchanges and centralise Peppol traffic through that gateway.
- Start with a web portal. For low volumes or early experimentation, a Peppol portal offered by an Access Point lets you manually create or upload invoices and send them via Peppol without deep technical work.
Once you’ve chosen a route, your provider will register your organisation as a Peppol participant, assign your Peppol ID(s), publish your capabilities in an SMP, and optionally add you to the Peppol Directory.
You can then map your invoice data to Peppol BIS Billing 3.0, validate that your documents meet the schema and business rules, and run test transactions. After this, you’ll be able to roll out to real customers and suppliers.
The future of Peppol
Today Peppol is mainly associated with invoicing. But the specifications cover more of the procure-to-pay↗ and order-to-cash cycle, including orders, order responses, despatch advice and more.
As organisations start to look to automate entire business processes, using Peppol for end-to-end document exchange is becoming increasingly appealing.
International efforts such as Peppol International (PINT) and initiatives like ViDA point towards a future where Peppol or Peppol-like networks play a role not just in business-to-business document exchange, but also in providing tax authorities with real-time transaction data.
Accessing Peppol with Moss
Moss now provides direct access to the Peppol network so you can receive e-invoices from your suppliers straight into Moss, without detours via email or manual uploads. Once activated, your suppliers can send compliant Peppol invoices to your Moss account, where they’re processed just like any other invoice.
This is especially important for companies operating in Belgium where, from 1 January 2026, Peppol connectivity will be mandated for B2B transactions. To remain compliant, businesses must be able to receive invoices via Peppol.
By activating Peppol with Moss, you stay ahead of the mandate while avoiding the risk of non-compliance, churn, or disruption in your supplier relationships.
Right now we’re enabling Peppol access individually on a customer-by-customer basis. It’s available immediately for our Belgian customers with urgent compliance needs, and for customers in other markets who want to start receiving e-invoices via Peppol.
If you’d like to enable Peppol for your account, simply reach out to your Moss contact, and we’ll take care of the setup with you.
