The Peppol Network

What is Peppol — and how Paylists connects you to it

Peppol is the secure European network for sending and receiving structured electronic invoices. Here's how it works, where Paylists supports it today, and a tool to check whether a business is already on the network.

Search the Peppol network See covered countries

Peppol in plain English

Peppol (Pan-European Public Procurement OnLine) is a standardised, secure network for exchanging business documents — most commonly e-invoices. Instead of emailing PDFs, you send a structured invoice in the EN 16931 / Peppol BIS Billing 3.0 format that the receiver's system can read automatically.

You connect once to a Peppol Access Point and can then reach every other business and public body on the network — across borders, with no separate integration per customer.

Structured, not PDF

A Peppol invoice is machine-readable data following EN 16931 — so it can be validated, routed and booked automatically, with far fewer errors than a PDF or paper invoice.

Secure & verified

Documents travel through certified Access Points over an encrypted, four-corner network. Every participant has a verified identity, so you know who you're invoicing.

One connection, all of Europe

A single Peppol connection reaches every other participant — public sector and private — across all member countries. No bespoke setup for each trading partner.

How a Peppol invoice travels

Peppol uses a four-corner model. You never connect directly to your customer — your Access Points handle delivery between you.

1

You (sender)

Create a structured invoice in Paylists.

2

Your Access Point

Paylists, via Flowin, sends it onto the Peppol network.

3

Their Access Point

The network routes it to your customer's provider.

4

Customer (receiver)

It lands in their system, ready to book and pay.

Each participant is reachable at a unique Peppol ID — the address the network uses to route documents to the right recipient. You can look one up below.

Countries we cover for Peppol

Paylists makes Peppol e-invoicing available in these six markets today, through Flowin (an e-invoicing product of Codabox).

United Kingdom: Paylists software is available for invoicing and cash flow. Peppol functionality through Flowin/Codabox is not currently available for UK businesses unless Paylists confirms otherwise in writing. See the full Peppol country availability page.

Peppol questions, answered

A Peppol Participant Identifier (Peppol ID) is the unique address a business is reachable at on the network. It combines a scheme code (EAS) — which says what kind of identifier it is, such as a VAT or company number — with the identifier value, written as scheme:value, for example 9930:DE123456789.
Use the Search Peppol tool above. Choose the business's country, pick the scheme that matches their identifier, and enter their Peppol ID. We open the official Peppol Directory so you can see whether the participant is registered and what documents they can receive. Because publication to the Directory is voluntary, some live participants may not be listed.
It depends on your country. Several EU markets either mandate or are moving toward mandatory B2B e-invoicing via Peppol, and many public-sector buyers already require it. Even where it isn't mandatory, Peppol removes manual data entry and speeds up payment. Check your country page for the local rules and timeline.
You get a Peppol ID through a Peppol Access Point provider. With Paylists, we register you on the network through Flowin (an e-invoicing product of Codabox) as part of onboarding — subject to KYC/verification where applicable — so you can start sending and receiving structured invoices.

Ready to send your first Peppol invoice?

Get set up on the Peppol network and start invoicing in minutes — from €5/month.

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