E-invoicing will become mandatory for businesses in Europe in 2030, and as early as 2026 in Belgium.
Many small businesses read “e-invoice” and think of the PDF sent over email. That isn’t an e-invoice. An e-invoice is a machine-readable invoice format that allows for automated payments.
Believe it or not, the technology has existed since 1965. The first e-invoice ever sent was a shipping manifest sent by telex that same year using a format called EDI (electronic data interchange). We’re still using EDI today to send e-invoices, in addition to other formats.
E-invoices can travel on a variety of networks. The most popular of these networks is PEPPOL, but there are closed operator networks as well.
The EU’s regulation to mandate e-invoicing for all businesses flies into the teeth of multiple systems, standards, networks, and legacy formats. However, Europe can look to the Nordics for guidance, which has been using e-invoicing for over 20 years, especially in Norway, Finland, and Sweden.
Also in Finland and the Nordics, a company called Maventa provides connections to e-invoicing transmission layers. Maventa’s technology is already integrated into popular ERPs and many people might be using Maventa under the hood without knowing it.
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Legacy co-existing with new tech
Despite e-invoicing technology’s 60-year history, it is deeply integrated into large corporation payment systems. Getting rid of EDI simply isn’t an option—at least not for now.
Europe has issued the EN 16931 standard as part of its regulatory clampdown but adoption is unlikely to happen quickly for companies using legacy systems.
Individual countries also have proprietary standards for their e-invoices. For example, Finland uses the Finvoice 3.0 and TEAPPSXML 3.0 formats, Sweden uses Svefaktura, and Germany uses XRechnung and ZUGFeRD.
“Maventa provides format conversions for all relevant formats, and we’re introducing more as we go,” says Heikki Malkamäki, Managing Director at Maventa. “The regulation doesn’t particularly care what format is used, so long as it’s compliant with the EU invoicing standard.”
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Benefits of e-invoicing
The use of e-invoicing can significantly speed up payments.
Lost or forgotten invoices become a thing of the past because invoices are integrated into the ERP directly and arrive almost instantly.
“Many businesses cite poor information flow as the main reason for late customer payments. E-invoicing solves that,” says Malkamäki.
E-invoicing can also reduce fraud.One of Maventa’s value-add services is fraud detection: It uses AI to analyze incoming and outgoing invoices to find erroneous or potentially fraudulent invoices.
BEC (business email compromise) is a serious threat to businesses of all sizes. It refers to a technique where threat actors send fraudulent invoices over email to the accounts department and demand payment. BEC attacks have been successful against massive companies, including Google and Facebook who paid more than $100 million to fraudsters who used this technique. A Toyota subsidiary lost $37 million in 2019 after a BEC attack.
E-invoicing adds a layer into the invoice lifecycle that makes such attacks far more challenging to execute successfully.
E-invoicing helps companies more easily remain compliant with VAT payments, especially as Europe begins implementing its ViDA (VAT in Digital Age) framework to combat VAT fraud, which introduces new RFI requirements for ERP providers.
Maventa’s 2025 goals
Looking ahead, Maventa is monitoring the rollout of e-invoicing mandates across Europe, evaluating which markets they can effectively serve. To do this, the company has its eyes open for partnerships that create mutual benefits and synergies.
Maventa has 15 years of experience in this market—a major advantage over newcomers. “There’s plenty of learning that occurs in 15 years. Our product is high quality and has an extremely high success rate,” says Malkamäki.