We stumbled upon a post on LinkedIN by Benjamin Coumont, Sales and Marketing Director of Babelway. He wrote that he was attending an event organized by FEB / VBO about the e-Invoicing and PEPPOL adoption in Belgium. He first stated:

“One of the messages of a keynote speaker from the Belgian authorities was about the sense of urgency to “call PEPPOL and e-Invoicing a success for the whole Belgian economy.”

“In my mind, a reception / delivery channel using PEPPOL can only be called a success if it represents a significant portion of your invoicing. Receiving / sending 1% of your invoices via PEPPOL does not meet (and will never meet) simplification and cost-saving expectations.”

Even though this is interesting and falls in line with an much commented on LinkedIN post, called “PEPPOL, does anyone care?” the more interesting part was this:

“Who is pushing for the e-Invoicing and the open integration model using PEPPOL, the public or private sector? Let’s be honest. The government clearly takes a leadership role, but Johan Van Steelandt (the Belgian authority mentioned above) was telling the audience: It will not last for years. Once the authorities receive their invoices electronically from suppliers, you can expect promotion of PEPPOL as well as a related task force to be scaled down. 

Would this mean that once mandatory B2G e-invoicing is in full force -late 2018, early 2019- PEPPOL will no longer be promoted by national public administrations? And how will EU national governments make sure that e-invoicing will be the predominant form of invoicing between businesses by 2020? Or do they – naively – expect that mandatory B2G e-invoicing will have a massive spill-over effect on B-2-B, smeB-2-B and smeB-2-smeB?