Germany's e-invoicing mandate (E-Rechnung) explained

Germany's move to mandatory B2B e-invoicing — E-Rechnung — is often misreported as a single 2025 switch that either already applies to you or does not. The reality is more forgiving and more precise: the obligation to receive a structured invoice and the obligation to issue one land on different dates, and getting that distinction right tells you exactly what you need in place and when.

Receiving came first

The rules come from the Wachstumschancengesetz, passed in 2024. The first milestone is already behind us: since 1 January 2025, every business established in Germany must be able to receive an e-invoice that complies with the European standard EN 16931. In practice this means a German business cannot refuse a properly formatted structured invoice on the grounds that it would rather have a PDF. Receiving capability is the baseline that is now assumed across the whole domestic B2B market.

Note what this milestone is not. It did not require anyone to start issuing structured invoices in 2025. A supplier could still send a PDF, provided the recipient agreed — the mandate at this stage is about the recipient's ability to accept the structured form, not the supplier's obligation to produce it.

Issuing phases in by size

The obligation to issue structured invoices arrives later and in two steps, keyed to turnover:

• 1 January 2027 — businesses with annual turnover above roughly €800,000 must issue structured e-invoices for domestic B2B transactions; paper and unstructured PDFs stop being valid for them.
• 1 January 2028 — the same obligation extends to all remaining businesses, regardless of size.

Thresholds and transitional allowances can be adjusted, so if your German issuing date is close to a boundary, confirm the current position with the Bundesministerium der Finanzen or your tax adviser rather than assuming last year's figure still holds.

No central platform — which is where Peppol comes in

Germany deliberately did not build a central government clearance system. There is no equivalent of Poland's KSeF or Italy's SdI that every invoice must pass through for validation; Germany runs a post-audit model, where structured invoices move directly between businesses and the tax authority inspects after the fact. That design choice is what makes the delivery channel an open question you get to answer.

The accepted formats are all built on EN 16931. XRechnung is the national CIUS (a country-specific tightening of the European standard), and ZUGFeRD is the popular hybrid that carries a human-readable PDF and the structured XML in one file. Crucially, Peppol BIS Billing 3.0 is a recognised way to transport these invoices — because there is no mandated central pipe, Peppol's four-corner network is a natural fit for getting a compliant document from you to a German recipient.

What a Stripe user billing German businesses does

Stripe remains your system of record for invoices, customers, and payments. E-Rechnung does not change how you create an invoice — it changes the form it has to take and, from 2027–2028, the obligation to produce that form. The practical checklist:

1. Work out whether your German customers already expect structured invoices. Many larger buyers ask for XRechnung or a Peppol-delivered invoice well ahead of their own legal deadline, because their side of the receiving mandate is already live.
2. Check that your Stripe company profile is complete — legal name, VAT number, and registered address all feed into the structured document and are exactly the fields a validator checks.
3. Pick a delivery path and send a test invoice before your first real one.

Because Germany accepts Peppol delivery and imposes no national portal, Peppost fits neatly on top of a Stripe billing setup. It reads the invoices and credit notes you have already finalised in Stripe, generates the compliant UBL under the Peppol BIS Billing 3.0 profile, attaches the original Stripe PDF as the human-readable rendering, confirms the recipient is reachable on the network before any credit is spent, and dispatches through a certified access point. There is no subscription, credits do not expire, and new accounts get a few free sends so you can rehearse the whole thing — including in Stripe test mode. The sending guide has the step-by-step, and the FAQ covers the rest.

Germany is one piece of a wider shift; our country-by-country rundown shows how its receive-then-issue approach compares with France's platform model and Belgium's straight Peppol mandate. If Peppol itself is still fuzzy, the plain-English guide to Peppol is the place to start.