How to Get a Peppol ID: A Step-by-Step Guide for 2026

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You do not apply for a Peppol ID from a central authority, and there is no government form to complete. You get one by registering with a certified Peppol Access Point provider, who creates your entry on the network using an identifier your business already holds — usually your VAT number or company registration number, paired with a four-digit scheme code. Registration typically takes a few working days. There is no fee for the identifier itself; you pay your provider for access to the network.

For years, Peppol was something that mattered mainly if you sold to governments in the Nordics or Benelux. That has changed. Belgium, Italy and Poland already mandate structured e-invoicing. Germany’s receiving obligation is in force. France’s mandate reached every established business on 1 September 2026. And on 23 June 2026, the UK government confirmed Peppol as the core interoperability network for the mandate arriving on 1 April 2029.

Search interest reflects it. UK searches for “Peppol ID” have grown roughly fivefold in two years. Most of that traffic arrives with one practical question attached: how do I actually get one?

The answer is simpler than most businesses expect. The harder questions come afterwards — which identifier to register under, whether a Peppol ID does anything for the mandate you are actually in scope for, and whether the invoice data underneath it will survive contact with a tax authority. This guide covers all three. For the wider picture of which rules apply to your business and when, see our e-invoicing compliance overview.

What is a Peppol ID?

A Peppol ID — formally, a Peppol participant identifier — is your business’s electronic address on the Peppol network. It tells the network where to deliver structured invoices and other business documents addressed to you.

The useful comparison is not a VAT number, which a tax authority issues to you. It is closer to a phone number listed in a directory. It is built from an identifier you already hold, it is published so others can find you, and it only works because everyone else on the network agrees to use the same addressing system.

You will sometimes see it called a “Peppol number”. That is not the official term, but it refers to the same thing.

What a Peppol ID looks like

A Peppol ID has two parts, separated by a colon: a four-digit scheme code, then the identifier value itself.

The scheme code is what tells the network how to read the number that follows. The same business could theoretically be addressed by more than one identifier, which is why the scheme matters as much as the value. Commonly used schemes include:

The authoritative list is maintained by OpenPeppol and is updated as new markets join, so check the current Peppol documentation before you commit to a scheme in a new country.

How to get a Peppol ID: five steps

1. Check whether you already have one

This step gets skipped more often than it should. If you use accounting or invoicing software in Belgium, the Netherlands or the Nordics, your provider may already have registered you on the network as part of onboarding. Businesses regularly go looking for a Peppol ID they were issued eighteen months ago.

Search for your company name or VAT number in the Peppol Directory. If you appear, you are already registered, and the entry will show which schemes and document types you are set up to receive.

2. Decide which identifier to register under

This is the decision that causes the most rework later. Two rules keep you out of trouble:

• Register per legal entity, not per group. If you have entities in three countries, each one needs its own Peppol ID under the scheme used in its country of establishment.
• Match what your customers expect. If they reconcile against your VAT number, register under the VAT scheme. Some sectors override this entirely: suppliers to NHS England are addressed by their GS1 Global Location Number, not their VAT number. Mismatches between the addressing identifier and the invoice data cause rejections that are tedious to diagnose. Our guide to what must appear on a UK VAT invoice covers the underlying data you need to have right.

3. Choose a certified Access Point provider

Almost every business reaches the network through a certified Access Point provider, who handles registration, transmission and format conversion on your behalf. OpenPeppol certifies these providers and publishes the full list.

You can become your own Access Point. It requires OpenPeppol membership, a Service Provider Agreement with your national Peppol Authority, ISO 27001 certification and AS4 infrastructure you operate to Peppol service levels. It is a standing engineering commitment rather than a setup task, and it makes sense for very few businesses outside software vendors and the largest corporates.

Four things worth checking before you sign:

• Country coverage. Not every provider supports every market or every country-specific format extension. If the UK mandate is on your roadmap, ask about PINT UK.
• Document types. Peppol carries more than invoices — orders, despatch advices and credit notes travel the same network. Confirm what you are actually enabled for.
• Integration. Native connections to your ERP, accounting system or marketplace matter more than the price per document.
• Non-Peppol markets. Several mandates do not run on Peppol at all. If you trade into those countries, you need a provider who covers them too.

The current certified list is published by OpenPeppol: Peppol certified service providers.

4. Register and complete verification

Your provider registers you and publishes your entry so the rest of the network can find you. Expect to supply company registration details, your VAT certificate, and evidence that the person signing has authority to act for the business. Verification exists to stop anyone registering an identifier that is not theirs — which is exactly what you want from a network that routes your invoices.

5. Test before you rely on it

Send and receive a test document before your first live invoice. Ask your provider to confirm two separate things: that your participant identifier is registered in the SML and resolvable through an SMP lookup, which is what actually makes you routable, and that your business card has been published to the Peppol Directory, which is what makes you findable by people searching for you. The second is optional and often skipped. A registration that is routable but not published will work, but customers looking you up will not find you.

How to find or verify a Peppol ID

The Peppol Directory is the network’s public lookup. You can search it by company name, VAT number or registration number, and it is the fastest way to answer two questions: is my own registration live, and can I send to this customer electronically?

Two caveats are worth knowing before you conclude a business is not on the network:

• Listing is optional. A participant can be registered and reachable without appearing publicly in the directory. An empty search result is not proof of absence.
• Entries are only as current as the provider keeps them. If a business has changed provider recently, the directory may lag.

If a customer is not listed, ask them directly for their Peppol ID and the schemes they accept. In markets where receiving obligations are already in force, most finance teams have it to hand.

How long does it take, and what does it cost?

Registration itself is quick. Once your provider has the documentation, a few working days is typical, and same-day is common for straightforward single-entity registrations. The delay, when there is one, is almost always document verification rather than anything technical.

On cost: there is no charge for the identifier. Peppol is a governed network, not a product you buy a licence for, and neither OpenPeppol nor any tax authority invoices you for a participant identifier. What you pay for is access — your provider will charge a subscription, a per-document fee, or both. That is the honest answer to “is Peppol free?”: the address is, the connection is not.

Where you actually need a Peppol ID

This is where a lot of guidance goes wrong. Peppol is not the only e-invoicing infrastructure in use, and several of the most demanding mandates in Europe do not run on it. A Peppol ID will not make you compliant in Italy, Poland or France.

If you sell into several of these markets, a Peppol ID is one component of a much larger answer. We have covered France’s 1 September 2026 mandate and what ViDA means for businesses in Europe separately. Country-level detail sits in our global VAT guides.

The UK position in 2026

E-invoicing remains voluntary for UK B2B transactions where both parties agree. That changes on 1 April 2029, when all VAT invoices in B2B and B2G transactions must be issued electronically. The model confirmed is a decentralised four-corner Peppol system based on EN 16931 and Peppol BIS Billing 3.0, with no real-time reporting to HMRC in the first phase. A full implementation roadmap is expected at Budget 2026. For the current rules, see how e-invoicing works in the UK today.

Parts of the UK are already there. NHS Supply Chain has required its suppliers to invoice over Peppol since October 2019, and public bodies covered by the Public Procurement Act 2023 must be able to accept e-invoices meeting BS EN 16931. Note the direction of that second obligation: it falls on the public body to receive, not on the supplier to send. Suppliers to the wider public sector are still free to invoice on paper until 2029. Many hold a working Peppol connection anyway, because their customers asked for one.

A Peppol ID does not make you compliant

It is worth being blunt about this, because the market rarely is. A Peppol ID is plumbing. It gets a structured document from your system to your customer’s system. It says nothing about whether the document is correct.

Four things sit underneath it, and all four are where businesses actually get caught:

1. The VAT treatment on the invoice. Structured invoices are machine-read and machine-checked. A VAT treatment that survived years of PDF invoices because nobody looked closely will not survive automated validation.
2. Establishment versus registration. Most domestic mandates apply to businesses established in the country. Holding a VAT registration there is not the same test, and the two are constantly confused in both directions.
3. Data quality across systems. Customer records, tax codes and product data feed the invoice. Errors are rarely found before they have been repeated across thousands of invoices and several years of returns.
4. Reconciliation with your returns. Once transaction data reaches tax authorities in structured form, differences between what you invoiced and what you declared become visible without anyone opening an audit.

Frequently asked questions