Knowledge · E-invoicing
What is a Peppol Access Point?
Tasks of an Access Point when sending
The sending Access Point receives the document from the sender’s software and delivers it to the receiver’s Access Point. It does this in three steps.
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Identify the receiver
The Access Point queries the central Service Metadata Locator (SML) to find out which Service Metadata Publisher (SMP) is responsible for the receiver’s Peppol ID. The SMP states whether the receiver accepts the document type and at which address its Access Point can be reached. If the receiver has not registered the document type, the document cannot be delivered.
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Validate the document
The Peppol Network Policy of 2 July 2026 assigns the validation of the document to the sending Access Point. An invoice in Peppol BIS Billing 3.0 is checked against the rules of the mandatory release. Sending only continues if the invoice is valid.
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Package and transmit the document
The Access Point places the document in the Peppol envelope (SBDH), which contains the sender, receiver and document type. It signs the message with its own Peppol certificate, encrypts it with the receiving Access Point’s certificate from the SMP and transmits it to the receiver’s Access Point using the Peppol AS4 profile. OpenPeppol publishes the current versions of all transport specifications on docs.peppol.eu.
Tasks of an Access Point when receiving
The receiving Access Point accepts the message, checks the signature and certificate of the sending Access Point, decrypts it and passes the document on to the receiver’s software. Validating the document again is optional for it.
The receiving Access Point reports to the sending one whether it was able to pass the document on, using a status message according to the Message Level Status (MLS) specification. The sending Access Point decides whether it receives this message only for a rejection or also for successful delivery.
OpenPeppol is gradually making it mandatory for all Service Providers to send these status messages.
Requirements for operating an Access Point
Only an OpenPeppol member that has signed the Service Provider Agreement with a Peppol Authority and passed the accreditation tests in the Peppol Testbed may operate its own Access Point. Only then does it receive the production certificate from the Peppol PKI.
What your software needs to connect to an Access Point
Your software handles the tasks before and after transmission. It stores the Peppol IDs of your customers and their invoice recipients, for example with scheme 9930 for a German VAT identification number or 0204 for a Leitweg-ID.
Before sending, it can query which document types the receiver has registered.
After sending, it stores the delivery status reported by the Access Point for each invoice, so that your customers can see which invoices were not delivered.
It fetches incoming documents from the Access Point or receives them via webhook.
InvoiceRails is the OpenPeppol-certified Access Point of fino data services. Your software connects to it through a REST API that covers sending, receiving, format lookup and delivery status via webhook, for any number of end customers through a single integration. You can check in advance whether a business partner can already be reached via Peppol with the free Peppol ID lookup.
