Peppol access points explained: do you have to choose one?
What a Peppol access point is, why you can't reach the network without one, and what changes when a service handles the access point for you.
When people first read about Peppol, the phrase that trips them up is "access point". It sounds like something you have to buy, configure, and maintain — a box in a rack somewhere. It is simpler than that, and understanding it clears up most of the confusion about how invoices actually move across the network.
An access point is your on-ramp
Peppol is not a website you log into and it is not a single central server. It is a network with agreed rules for how documents are formatted, addressed, and transported. To put a document onto that network, or to receive one from it, you connect through an access point: a certified provider that speaks the Peppol transport protocol and is authorised to exchange documents with every other access point.
Think of it the way email works. You do not connect your laptop directly to the global mail system; you send through a mail provider that knows how to route messages to any other provider. Peppol access points play the same role, with one difference that matters: they are certified. A provider has to be accredited by a Peppol authority to operate one, which is what lets any two access points trust each other's documents without a prior relationship.
The four-corner model
Peppol describes delivery with a four-corner model, and it is worth having the picture in your head because it explains why an access point is not optional.
- Corner one is you, the sender, with your billing system.
- Corner two is your access point, which takes your document onto the network.
- Corner three is the recipient's access point.
- Corner four is the recipient, with their accounting or ERP system.
A document travels one → two → three → four. You never talk to the recipient's system directly; your access point hands the document to theirs, and theirs delivers it inward. The two providers do the routing, the format checks, and the delivery receipts between them. This is also why the network can span countries and software you have never heard of — everyone agrees on the rules at corners two and three, so corners one and four do not need to match.
Before any of that can happen, the sending access point has to know which access point serves the recipient. It looks that up in the recipient's SMP (the directory record tied to their Peppol participant ID), which is how a document addressed to a participant identifier finds the right corner three. If you want the fuller picture of the network itself, what is Peppol covers it, and what is a Peppol ID explains the identifier that addressing depends on.
Why you can't just send it yourself
The obvious question is why you cannot post a document to the network directly and skip the access point. Two reasons. First, the network only accepts documents from accredited access points — that accreditation is what the whole trust model rests on. Second, operating one means implementing the Peppol transport protocol, holding the certificates, staying current as the specifications change, and maintaining the connection reliably. It is real infrastructure work, and it makes no sense to take it on to send a handful of invoices.
So in practice everyone uses a certified provider. The only real question is whether you deal with that provider directly or through a service that wraps it.
What it means when a service handles it for you
"Do you have to choose an access point?" The honest answer for most small and mid-size senders is no — you choose a service, and the access point comes with it.
That is how Peppost works. It sits at corner one alongside your Stripe billing and dispatches through a certified access point on your behalf. You never select a provider, hold a certificate, or configure a transport connection. You connect Stripe once, and when you send, Peppost generates the structured document, resolves the recipient's directory record to find their access point, and hands the document off. The certified plumbing is there — you just do not have to run it. The sending guide shows the flow from your side, and the FAQ covers the questions that come up most.
One thing worth being precise about: Peppost is send-only. Handling the sending access point for you is not the same as making you a receiving participant on the network. If you also need to receive Peppol documents, that is a separate registration, and a send-only service does not provide it.
The short version
An access point is a certified on-ramp to the Peppol network, and everyone needs one because the network has no public door. The four-corner model means your provider and the recipient's provider handle routing between them, so your billing system and theirs never have to match. And for most senders, choosing an access point is really just choosing a service that runs one for you. If you bill through Stripe, how to send a Stripe invoice over Peppol picks up where this leaves off.