E-invoices and payments
The Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) is an initiative of the European banking industry that will make all electronic payments across the euro area – e.g. by credit card, debit card, bank transfer or direct debit – as easy as domestic payments within one country are now. The SEPA project is strongly supported by the European Commission and the European Central Bank.
Due to the strong link between invoices and payments, SEPA offers an ideal launching pad for inter-operable e-Invoicing schemes in Europe by driving
process integration across the financial supply chain. In turn, mass adoption of e-invoicing could further stimulate migration to SEPA payment instruments.
For these mutual benefits to materialise, an e-invoice standard should be coherent with the ISO 20022 financial services messaging standard, which is being used in the context of SEPA.
For further information on SEPA: http://ec.europa.eu/internal_market/payments/sepa/index_en.htm
