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Executive Summary

The report has been produced as a joint product of the Euro Banking Association (EBA) and Innopay. As a discussion forum for payments practitioners, the EBA plays a major role in the financial industry as a developer of payment clearing infrastructures. Innopay is an independent consultancy firm specialised in payments.

The essential features of electronic invoicing are the replacement of manual paper-based routines, with new electronic integrated systems and processes. Benefits include the creation of integrated supply chains which are more cost effective, less error prone, faster and simpler to manage. The manual processing of paper invoices is labour intensive and time consuming, with high associated administrative costs. Other benefits of e-invoicing include improved customer care (typically nearly half of supplier queries relate to invoicing). Prompt payment is also facilitated through the elimination of manual interfaces in the invoice reconciliation process.

Management Summary

• e-invoicing is in an accelerated period of growth from a low base but there are major unaddressed segments
• The European market for e-Invoicing services is very fragmented, and reaching all potential e-invoicing users is difficult which banks could assist in addressing
• The enablers and barriers impacting the adoption of e-invoicing, are technical barriers, but also an underlying and under recognised need at strategic management level to truly embrace e-business
• e-invoicing and its context have been poorly defined
  standardisation of the e-invoice as an exchangeable message is clearly needed, and there must be flexibility to meet specific and individual requirements
• Some regulatory and legal issues require to be addressed

Business Case

There are compelling business drivers to encourage the growth of e-invoicing. Annual corporate and public savings of €243 billion per annum are projected across Europe as a whole.  In a digital web based real-time economy, cost and efficiency pressures all act as drivers for the adoption of e-invoicing.

Payments and e-invoicing

The European market-place environment will be progressively impacted through the introduction of the Single Euro Payment Area (SEPA), which will create an integrated payments environment based on a set of common payment instruments used throughout the eurozone and beyond. This major programme is co-ordinated by the European Payments Council (EPC) supported by the European Central Bank and the European Commission. By introducing common schemes and frameworks for making electronic payments by means of cards, credit transfers and direct debits, the banking industry will be able to support a much tighter integration benefiting the end-to-end trade process including electronic invoicing.

Article by Tom Wilson - Director www.appropriateprocurrement.com