Belgium switched to Peppol e-invoicing on 1 January — fines reach €5,000 per missed invoice.
On 1 January 2026 the Belgian B2B invoice stopped being a PDF in an email and became a Peppol BIS 3.0 (Business Interoperability Specification) XML document, routed across an access-point network before the VAT office will accept it. Roughly one million businesses fell inside the rule overnight: the corner shop in Ghent, the sole trader working on the side, the one-person enterprise under the €25,000 Article 56bis Small Enterprises exemption, the farmer on a special agricultural scheme. The Minister of Finance's tolerance window expired on 31 March 2026. Fines are now live: €1,500 first offence, €3,000 second, €5,000 thereafter. Belgium's own access-point trade press concedes the Peppol modules built into accounting software "simply aren't working properly."
01The pain
Nine in the morning, somewhere in West Flanders. A baker who has filed paper VAT returns since 1998 opens her accounting software and finds three structured XML files where her supplier invoices used to be. No PDF. No human-readable view. Her bookkeeper says the invoices are technically there — they just can't be read until someone re-renders them through a separate viewer. On paper she is compliant. In practice, she cannot tell what she owes this week.
Roughly a million Belgian businesses woke into that morning on 1 January 2026, when the Federal Public Service Finance ruled every domestic B2B invoice must travel as Peppol BIS 3.0 XML across the access-point network; PDFs by email no longer count for VAT.1,4 The rule catches the sole trader under the €25,000 Article 56bis Small Enterprises exemption, the one-person enterprise, the farmer on a special agricultural scheme. The Minister of Finance's tolerance closed on 31 March. Fines run €1,500, then €3,000, then €5,000, with three-month gaps between escalations. Sitting on top is the heavier lever: the buyer's right to refuse VAT deduction on any invoice that should have been BIS 3.0 and arrived as a PDF.3
Peppol Box, a Belgian access-point operator, catalogues the day-to-day traps. The canonical participant identifier is 0208 (the BCE/KBO, Belgium's enterprise registry); the legacy 9925 (VAT number) stayed in active use, so invoices arrive twice or vanish. Suppliers fire raw XML buyers cannot open. Directory coverage hovers at 90–95%. Foreign suppliers are exempt entirely, forcing dual workflows. The flattest complaint, in the same write-up: the Peppol module, on the day the fines went live, does not work.2
Further reading
- 1 einvoice.belgium.be (Belgian Federal Public Service Finance — official portal) — "FAQ — General questions B2B": einvoice.belgium.be/en/FAQ/general-questions-b2b
- 2 Peppol Box (Belgian access-point operator, trade-press blog) — "Peppol Belgium: problems in 2026": peppol-box.be/en/blog/peppol-belgium-problems-2026
- 3 Banqup (Unifiedpost — Belgian e-invoicing platform) — "E-invoicing grace period 2026 Belgium": banqup.com/resources/blog/e-invoicing-grace-period-2026-belgium
- 4 European Commission — Digital Building Blocks — "eInvoicing in Belgium" (country page): ec.europa.eu/digital-building-blocks/.../eInvoicing+in+Belgium
02Who solves this today
Belgian-market vendors that publicly self-market to the Peppol B2B niche on their own homepage. Each entry verified live on the date of writing. The list is intentionally narrow.
Listed providers publicly market to the Belgian Peppol B2B niche on their own homepages. Inclusion is not endorsement. Adjacent Belgian-market vendors were considered and excluded where their public homepage did not contain a verbatim Peppol / B2B-e-invoicing self-marketing phrase: Codabox in particular markets accounting-data automation (VOICI / VOILA) to accountants and entrepreneurs but its front page does not mention Peppol or the 2026 B2B mandate, so it was dropped per the Vietnam / US-AP precedent: two-or-three verified entries beat a longer list with a weak link. The official Belgian Federal Public Service Finance portal (einvoice.belgium.be) and the European Commission's eInvoicing country page are cited above in section 01 as the source of the regulatory regime, not as solution providers.
Report a mistake — or suggest a new solution
Spot a wrong number, dead source link, missing aspect, broken translation? Or know a vendor we should list as a solution? Tell us. The Director re-checks every report and either updates the page or writes back with a reason.
Got it — thank you.
The Director will look at your report on the next research cycle. If you left an email you'll hear back when we either update the page or decide it's not actionable (with a one-paragraph reason).
Listed companies — manage your entry. If you are one of the providers above and anything here is wrong, missing, or out of date — or you'd rather not be listed — let us know. Removal is processed within 24 hours; corrections within 7 business days. We do not contact listed companies first; we publish what your own public marketing claims and respond when you reach out. Email contact@aikraft.com.