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Absolutely correct

I should add that often enough there are perfect nails for your hammer - but to find them you have stop using all your time for finetuning strategies and planning plans - instead get around the next corner (which is impossible to see around) with your idea/hammer and almost invariably there are people asking if it could be used for nails you have not thought of..

We are delivering it - and the global movement towards a network of interoperability between service providers is growing by the day. The ISO20022 standard is global, ready and free to use. This is question of will - as always with innovations. Some prefer to see the difficulties - others the opportunities.

Rein: "username and password each time you visit the portal, one or two portals seem manageable, but once you translate all of your monthly bills to portals you end up with a large amount of URL's, usernames, passwords and navigations on each site to wade through - not to mention remembering to view these bills each month. This is one of the compelling reasons why companies do not achieve a ROI when trying to convert paper based customers to portal registrants."

this is the reason why we need generic e-invoicing tools - use one - send to all (just like payments) - but it has to carry rich data - and standardized (just like payments when it comes to discipline - but more fields - just like ISO20022)

E-mail for invoicing has not been seen as a solution in the Nordics. For consumers and SMEs the most convenient solution is to receive the invoice to the netbank (almost all use e-banking) and then get an SMS notification where you also can approve payment just by pressing "a". You can also pick invoices for automatic debit - by issuer and by size - and then move back to approving every one when you so prefer. Obvious consolidation direction for SEPA direct debit - if we are at all interested in lowering costs for enterprises.

On the sending side it is important to supply the data elements your customer needs - ie use standards in sending portals supplied by banks and others.

b2b is all about automating accounting, VAT processes, financing etc. see earlier blogs

"From the perspective of buyers/payors, they become non-generic since the processing at their end would differ for e-invoices received from the multiple e-invoicing providers."  There is usually a need for using a service provider who can reformat the invoices received in different formats > then this is generic.

"If I recall correctly, an Intuit PaymentNetwork executive mentioned a couple of months ago that the challenge is to get buyers/payors to adopt such generic solutions." Why difficult - many benefits with using generic solutions - many disadvantages with using buyer- specific. "

"After all, from their perspective, why won't they like to get all invoices from all suppliers in a single format of their choosing, which appears possible only with a buyer-specific e-invoicing portal?" First of all: bad service to force partners away from generic solutions - secondly by using service provider the invoices arriving at ERP are in single format (and you cannot really force all customers in your own model).

Think: just like payments with 4-corner model and unified standards. Of course this will be the end-game. Despite some vendors preferring a fragmented world.

Let us put it in simple terms: for any SME it should be possible to send all the invoices in the same way to all customers - with the same service. They do not have time to learn to use different buyer-specific portals.

For buyers it should be possible to receive all invoices into his e-invoice-receiving service - reformatted by the service provider so that the ERP application and the payment initiation gets them into one format.

By generic e-invoicing portals we mean e-invoicing services where senders of e-invoices can key in invoices or upload invoice files - and furthermore send it to all receivers (4-corner service provider network essential). NOT having to use buyer specific portals. And there should be a development toward a common standard for the mass market - to make life easier for invoicing software/cloud service providers.

It is not realistic or necessary "provide identical user experience regardless of biller, bank or portal". That is not the case for e-banking either

I do not quite understand your point. The way we have done it is to use a standard making it possible to change service provider without changing your systems. Some fine-tuning obviously needed. Naturally all invoices end up for payment in a bank of the receivers choice. I have heard claims about pipe dreams often in the past and in most cases we have been able to prove the pessimists wrong..

Amazing. We introduced a 8 eurocentric fee per picked up cheque in 1983 in Finland - and the usage (POS mostly ) disappeared overnight (debit cards got a big boost). Howvisibjly is the cost charged for in the UK?