It is only a question of time before all e-invoices, e-receipts, and payments are effected in Real Time - in standardised structured form.
Why does it not happen faster? EU has been driving e-invoicing for over ten years.
Maybe it is only a question of awareness? It is not widely enough known that these transactions are the
first and broadest step in a staircase to wide-scale automation, transparency, GDPR-protected MyData usage in service design and big data for society at large.
Based on our domestic figures there should be some 40bn invoices sent in Europe and over 100 billion receipts. The b2b share would be 20bn invoices and some 10bn receipts. The direct cost saving alone for European enterprises and the public sector would
- based on these figures - easily exceed 450bn/year.
Other benefits include lower risks, staff freed up for productive work, better financing, better financial management, less grey economy etc. Hundreds of billions more - and the
key to a real Single Market.
The first step enables the second step: Real-time automated accounting, real-time VAT- and other reporting. Huge additional savings and less grey economy.
The third step: Real time VAT-reporting can deliver material for national and EU economic forecasting. The - in practice free - some 1400 bn EAN-coded purchase lines will form hugely valuable golden source big data. Add to this real-time data
from asset transactions (listed and unlisted shares, real estate etc) and real-time income registers.... What more can be needed?
The fourth step based on automated accounting enables automated processing and risk evaluation in credit processes. Huge savings, better risk management, less credit losses, more credit volumes, lower (and higher) margins and fees..
The only question is - why does not the awareness spread - leading to much faster decisions to make all this mandatory.
We need more regulation! Far too slow if left to enterprises. PSD2, GDPR etc were only the beginning. Banks are best placed to spearhead much of this to the SME-market