De Tijd recently reported that Belgian software companies are flocking to France en masse, with plans to subsequently conquer Europe. Mandatory e-invoicing and Peppol are presented as a cornucopia of opportunity. On paper, it is a brilliant narrative.
As a finance specialist focused on credit management—essentially what happens after the (e-)invoice—our experience with the Belgian Peppol implementation tells a different story. E-invoicing is a solid technology, but it remains a simple tool: a commodity product.
In a commodity market, distribution always triumphs over technique. After the gold rush comes the race to the bottom on pricing. Consequently, e-invoicing alone is a business model with an expiration date.
PEPPOL PANIC IS GREATER THAN PEPPOL ITSELF
In Q4 of 2025, it seemed as though every Belgian company had to find a Peppol provider quickly before the deadline, or their administration would collapse. First, you create urgency. Then, you sell the solution for that urgency.
Peppol is presented as a complex digital transformation, whereas for many companies, it is nothing more than additional functionality within existing software.
“The Belgian Peppol panic was a storm in a teacup. Some people make good money selling umbrellas.“
Within a few years, e-invoicing will be mandatory across Europe. A mandate is exactly the kind of functionality that ERP and accounting providers absorb: it is a requirement, everyone has it, but no one pays for it separately. What remains is competition based on price, ease of use, and marketing. This is the very definition of commoditization, and as is usually the case, it ends in consolidation.
WHY E-INVOICING IS NOT CREDIT MANAGEMENT
An invoice format is a data standard. It can be fully specified, certified, and thus automated away. There is a standard for what an invoice looks like. There is no standard for getting paid. Payment behavior is human behavior: it varies by customer, sector, country, and relationship, and it shifts as soon as the economic climate changes.
An invoice can be sent perfectly electronically and still be substantively incorrect. It can arrive perfectly and still remain unpaid for ninety days. A company can be perfectly connected to Peppol and still have no idea which customers are structurally late with payments.
The issue does not lie within the invoice itself, but in what happens before and after—the efficiency of the entire order-to-cash cycle. This does not mean that electronic invoicing is unimportant. On the contrary.
Peppol is a significant step in the (full) digitalization of traditional finance flows. However, we must stop pretending that digitalizing the invoice is the same as digitalizing the financial process.
“A digital invoice that is paid late remains a late-paid invoice.”
E-INVOICING IS A PREREQUISITE, FASTER PAYMENTS THE GOAL
The data flowing through an organization via Peppol is far more valuable than the delivery method itself. It turns credit decisions, invoicing, payment follow-up, reconciliation, and reporting into one cohesive process. Only then do finance teams free up the time to look ahead.
The question, therefore, is not how you get connected to Peppol. The question is what you can do better than before thanks to that digital invoice stream. Those who ask that question look beyond the tool—toward data, processes, payment behavior, working capital, and cash flow.
No one wakes up in the morning with the ambition of having a perfect Peppol connection. Companies want to receive cash.
