Who Owns Peppol?

With all the buzz around Peppol e-invoicing across Australia and New Zealand, one of the many questions we get regularly when speaking with businesses about this is who actually owns Peppol?

Peppol is managed by OpenPeppol a not-for-profit, democratic, member-led international organisation to enable and govern e-invoicing & e-procurement across the globe using the Peppol interoperability framework. It is based in Brussels and was established under Belgian law in 2012. 

governance of peppol

To ensure the validity, security and compliance with the network, Peppol has a very strong governance structure in place. These governance agreements ensure compliance to the standardisation that is required for all stakeholders and are established and governed through legally binding multi-lateral agreements.

• General Assembly: OpenPeppol members form the general assembly in accordance with OpenPeppol statutes and internal regulations, elects the general secretary, managing committee and election committee.
• OpenPeppol
• Peppol Authorities: Peppol authorities drive the adoption of Peppol in a jurisdiction. They are currently all government agencies. Australian Taxation Office (ATO) is the Peppol Authority in Australia and Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) is the Peppol authority in New Zealand. These Peppol authorities are also OpenPeppol members and operate under standard bilateral legal agreement with OpenPeppol.
• Peppol Service Providers: Peppol Service providers enable business process interoperability between end users over Peppol network via Peppol BIS. These are sometimes also called as Peppol Access Points (APs) or Service Metadata Publishers (SMPs), are OpenPeppol members and operate under standard bilateral agreements with a Peppol Authority.
• End Users: These are buyers and sellers that exchange business documents and are also known as participants in the Peppol network. These can be members of OpenPeppol but are not required to be. End users get into commercial agreements with Service Providers for availing Peppol services.

how has peppol evolved?

The Peppol network and interoperability framework has evolved dramatically since its inception in 2008. It was started as a pilot project by European commission in 2008 with focus on cross border public procurement in Europe. The acronym, Peppol or (Pan European Public Procurement OnLine) was later established and has been managed by OpenPeppol since 2012. Since its expansion into the private sector and use outside of Europe it was rebranded as Peppol.

• 2008 – PEPPOL pilot by European commission
• 2010 – First live transaction
• 2011 – PEPPOL e-invoicing mandate in Norway
• 2012 – OpenPeppol established
• 2013 – AS2 protocol released
• 2015 – Peppol BIS 2.0 released, 5 Peppol Authorities
• 2018 – 11 Peppol Authorities, Peppol adopted in Singapore, New OpenPeppol Statutes.
• 2019 – Peppol BIS 3.0 released, Peppol adopted in Australia and New Zealand
• 2020 – AS4 protocol released and 15 Peppol Authorities
• 2021 – New Peppol Agreements in line with Peppol expansion globally

how can we get started with peppol e-invoicing?

Enabling Peppol e-invoicing for your organisation should be simple, value driven and cost effective. We offer a range of different solutions to get your business ready for Peppol e-invoicing.