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I have been promoting e-invoices over 5 years. I still have high hopes for it, but still there is something what is missing.
This morning after advising my old dad how to use e-invoices, I started to count how many different routes I receive my e-invoices. One comes to my online bank, other comes as email notification from e-invoice portal provided by Postal Office and then allowing me to transfer that to my secondary bank, one comes from my companies CRM system, one comes as email notification from different companies logging me to their own e-invoice portal and finally some companies send me PDf files as invoices by email. I have over four different passwords/ user id's to pay my invoices. No wonder I am as confused as my dear old dad was confused when he was setting up how to receive e-invoices. There were so many strange banking related words. He didn't get confirmation from company that in the future he will get e-invoices. Same thing to me, one company still sends me paper invoices, even I have set up them all the information to receive e-invoices over five times. Now I just gave up.
There is a plan how all the Europe will get e-invoices. This standard is really good thing. Now we need another standard how consumers can receive e-invoices or how small companies can send e-invoices to all of the countries in same manner. As a consumer, my idea would be one online portal, where I will get all of my invoices and there I can select my bank or even banks I would like to use when paying a bill. I would get notification to my email box or mobile phone every time there is a new e-invoice. To log in to this portal would allow me to use my own preferred method of identification, not standard new password/user id- systems. Companies could send all the invoices to one place or link e-invoices from their own portal to this place. Same place consumer could notify companies to send future invoices to this place.
Ok, this is just a dream. It lacks reality, it lacks funding and most of all- like in mobile payments, there are just too many players who want their piece of action and they are not ready to give up.
This content is provided by an external author without editing by Finextra. It expresses the views and opinions of the author.
Nick Green Director at Purple Patch Broking Ltd
22 August
Oleg Stefanet Chief Risk Officer at payabl.
20 August
Venkatesh P Co-Founder and Director at Maveric Systems
19 August
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