The Paypers Feature Article: SEPA Direct Debit services - Will they impact European electronic invoicing?

Electronic invoicing is often referred to in close connection with the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) and particularly with the SEPA Direct Debit schemes, which the European Payments Council officially rolled out at the beginning of the week (November 2nd 2009). The main reason behind the frequently-made association lies within the fact that the SEPA Direct Debit services have created – for the first time in the history of the European Commission - a payment instrument that can be used for domestic and cross-border collections throughout 32 states European states (the 27 EU Member States

E-invoicing has the potential to streamline the flow of information in financial value chains as well as to eliminate paper-based procedures from the B2B and B2G payments equation, and is therefore regarded as one of the processes most likely to profit from the introduction of the SEPA Direct Debit Schemes. The question that begs to be asked at this point is – are these expectations realistic? Do the SEPA Direct Debit Schemes effectively contribute to the reduction of any one of the obstacles that currently prevent the development of electronic invoice exchanges at European level?

E-invoicing has been billed many times as a major revenue generator, particularly for the supply side, only to achieve disappointing results and consistently fall behind market expectations. To answer our query, we must therefore look at the main challenges to large-scale e-invoicing adoption and see whether the newly-launched SEPA Direct Debit Schemes have the potential to lower them in any way.

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