Peppost

By the Financica team

Stripe Stripe
3 min read

Peppol e-invoicing is mandatory in Belgium: what Stripe users need to know

Belgium's structured B2B e-invoicing mandate is now in force. Here's what it means if you bill through Stripe, and how to stay compliant without leaving your existing workflow.

If you invoice business customers in Belgium, structured e-invoicing is no longer optional. Since 1 January 2026, Belgian VAT-registered businesses must issue and receive B2B invoices as structured electronic documents over the Peppol network — a PDF attached to an email no longer satisfies the requirement on its own.

For teams that run their billing through Stripe, this raises an awkward question: Stripe issues beautiful invoices, but it does not send them over Peppol. This post explains what the mandate actually requires and how to close that gap without migrating your billing to a heavier ERP.

What the Belgian mandate requires

The rule is narrower than it first appears. It applies to B2B transactions between VAT-registered businesses established in Belgium. In practice that means:

  • Invoices must be structured (machine-readable UBL), not just a PDF or a scan.
  • They must follow the Peppol BIS Billing 3.0 profile, aligned with the European standard EN 16931.
  • They must be exchanged over the Peppol network, where each party is reachable through a registered participant identifier.

B2C invoices and cross-border flows have their own timelines, but the direction of travel across the EU is the same: France, Poland, and Germany are all rolling out comparable requirements. Our country-by-country rundown tracks the deadlines. Getting Peppol working now is not a Belgium-only investment.

Why Stripe alone is not enough

Stripe is the system of record for your invoices, customers, and payments — and it stays that way. What Stripe does not do is generate the compliant UBL document or hand it to a certified Peppol access point for delivery. Those are exactly the two steps the mandate is about.

You have three broad options:

  1. Migrate to an ERP that has Peppol built in. Powerful, but a heavy change to your billing stack for a single compliance requirement.
  2. Build the integration yourself against an access point's API. Feasible, but you take on UBL generation, validation, and delivery monitoring.
  3. Add a thin Peppol delivery layer on top of the invoices you already issue in Stripe.

Sending a Stripe invoice over Peppol

The third option is what Peppost is built for. You connect your Stripe account once, and Peppost:

  • reads the finalised invoices and credit notes already in Stripe,
  • generates the compliant UBL document and attaches the original Stripe PDF as a human-readable rendering,
  • looks up the recipient in the Peppol directory before you spend anything, and
  • dispatches the document through a certified access point.

There is no subscription — you buy credits and spend one per send. New accounts start with a few free sends so you can rehearse the whole flow end to end, including in Stripe test mode. The step-by-step walkthrough lives in the sending guide, and the most common questions are answered in the FAQ.

What to do next

If you bill Belgian businesses through Stripe, the practical checklist is short:

  1. Confirm which of your customers require Peppol delivery.
  2. Make sure your own company details in Stripe are complete and accurate — legal name, VAT number, and address all flow into the structured invoice.
  3. Pick a delivery path and send a test invoice before your next real one.

The mandate is already live, but the work to comply is small when your invoices already exist in Stripe. The gap is delivery — and that is a solved problem.