United Kingdom

UK e-invoicing from 1 April 2029 with Peppol BIS 3.0 UBL (pre-confirmation: UK standards not yet set), EAS 9932, GBP, and the Peppol transmission boundary.

The UK government has decided that VAT invoices must be e-invoices from 1 April 2029, and that Peppol will be the UK’s core interoperability framework. The format is not yet set: the government’s roadmap builds the UK standards on established international standards, including those already used within the Peppol framework, possibly with a limited number of UK-specific requirements. The consultation response says the government’s work has focused on a decentralised model; neither it nor the roadmap fixes the corner model, which respondents discussed as four-corner or five-corner. Authority: HMRC + Department for Business and Trade (DBT).

So a UK invoice in Beliq is a Peppol BIS invoice with UK parties (EAS 9932) and GBP currency. See the Peppol BIS format reference for the full element layout.

The UK confirmed a mandatory e-invoicing regime for B2B and B2G in its consultation response of 26 November 2025, and the implementation roadmap of 28 October 2026 sets its start: from 1 April 2029, VAT-registered persons, public bodies included, must issue VAT invoices as e-invoices and be able to receive them, unless a specific exemption applies. Peppol is already mandatory inside the NHS, where the 2014 eProcurement Strategy binds providers and their suppliers through conditions of contract, and UK contracting authorities have had to accept compliant e-invoices since 2019. The detailed requirements follow between October 2027 and April 2028, and the secondary legislation may not be finished until Autumn 2028 or early 2029, so treat the specifics below as pre-confirmation.

Pre-confirmation, and not law yet. HMRC and the Department for Business and Trade published the implementation roadmap at Budget 2026 on 28 October 2026. It lists two points as already decided: e-invoicing for VAT invoices from 1 April 2029, and Peppol as the UK's core interoperability framework. The rest is scheduled rather than settled: a public technical consultation on the UK standards in Spring 2027; publication of the key requirements, including scope, exclusions, standards, guidance, business identifiers and service-provider requirements, between October 2027 and April 2028; and a decision on whether the UK needs its own Peppol Authority Specific Requirements. HMRC will become the UK Peppol Authority, a role that today sits within NHS Supply Chain, at a time not yet set. The enabling powers go into Finance Bill 2026-27, which the roadmap expects to become law in Spring 2027; the detailed rules follow in secondary legislation that may not be finished until Autumn 2028 or early 2029. The consultation response keeps real-time reporting out of the 2029 launch and says the government's work has focused on a decentralised model; it does not fix the corner model, which respondents discussed as four-corner or five-corner, and the roadmap does not either, so read four-corner as the expectation that follows from Peppol rather than a decision the government has published. HMRC's separate consultation on e-invoicing digital reporting, open until 20 January 2027, says any such reporting would be separate from the 2029 requirements, and takes no decision. The Budget itself puts no obligation on a taxpayer, so it carries no milestone here.

Last verified against the Public Procurement (Electronic Invoices etc.) Regulations 2019 (SI 2019/624) on legislation.gov.uk and the Department of Health NHS eProcurement Strategy (April 2014) for the 2014, 2019 and 2020 milestones, read on 20 September 2026, and for the rest HMRC and the Department for Business and Trade's Roadmap for e-invoicing implementation (28 October 2026), HMRC's tax information note E-invoicing requirements (28 October 2026), HMRC's consultation E-invoicing digital reporting (28 October 2026) and the gov.uk e-invoicing consultation response (updated 26 November 2025) on 30 October 2026. Official source.

If you sell to UK private-sector buyers today, e-invoicing is voluntary. From 1 April 2029, a VAT-registered seller must issue its VAT invoices as e-invoices, unless a specific exemption applies; sales to consumers and cross-border supplies need no e-invoice, because they need no VAT invoice. Plan your Peppol Access Point relationship before then. For the dates Beliq tracks across every covered country, see the mandate calendar.

MTD (Making Tax Digital) is HMRC’s digital VAT-return submission regime (mandatory since April 2019 for large turnover, April 2022 for all VAT-registered businesses). MTD is a separate compliance layer from e-invoicing: it covers VAT-return submission, not structured invoice exchange. The 2029 e-invoicing mandate is independent of MTD.

• Generate UK Peppol invoices via standard: "peppol-bis" (profile peppol), addressed with the UK VAT endpoint scheme (UK:VAT, Peppol EAS 9932).
• Validate Peppol BIS UBL against the full EN 16931 + Peppol BIS 3.0 Schematron (peppolVersion in the response). Parse reads its fields and runs no rules.
• Validation depth on the Peppol path is Authority-checked: Beliq asserts verdict parity against OpenPeppol’s own unit-test corpus (335 cases) plus its published example invoices. The pinned Peppol BIS Schematron carries no UK national rule family, so under the current pre-publication assumption the shared corpus is the only suite that applies. It exercises some of the pack’s rules and not others: what the test suites cover gives the count. We re-verify against HMRC and DBT publications on a calendar-enforced schedule and update the profile when the government publishes the UK standards, due between October 2027 and April 2028. See how verification works for the tier definitions.

The UK’s network is the Peppol Network. Beliq is not a Peppol Access Point. It does not:

• Transmit invoices over Peppol or register you as a UK Peppol participant.
• Operate the 4-corner exchange on your behalf.
• Submit VAT returns to HMRC via MTD (separate regime; not e-invoicing).

Today you send Beliq’s UBL output through your chosen Access Point (BYOC). Managed delivery over Peppol is in build. Authority oversight: HMRC + Department for Business and Trade.

Northern Ireland and the Windsor Framework

Northern Ireland parties carry XI-prefix VAT IDs for customs-aligned goods under the Windsor Framework. Peppol routing for NI parties is not clarified in current OpenPeppol public docs as of June 2026. Follow your Access Point provider’s NI routing guidance; do not assume NI invoices route identically to GB-prefix invoices for cross-border goods. Beliq emits the UBL document; the routing decision sits with your Access Point.

Address both parties with the UK VAT endpoint scheme (UK:VAT, EAS 9932) via the peppol block. Use GBP for the invoice currency. Provide either a buyerReference or an orderReference (Peppol requires one). The simpler alternative is to omit the peppol block and pass a vatId (GB…) + address.countryCode: "GB"; Beliq then derives the UK:VAT scheme (9932) automatically.

curl -X POST https://api.beliq.eu/v1/generate \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "standard": "peppol-bis",
    "profile": "peppol",
    "output": "xml",
    "invoice": {
      "number": "2026-0001",
      "issueDate": "2026-06-03",
      "currencyCode": "GBP",
      "buyerReference": "UK-PO-9911",
      "seller": {
        "name": "Test Seller Ltd",
        "vatId": "GB123456789",
        "peppol": { "schemeId": "9932", "id": "GB123456789" },
        "address": { "street": "1 Sample Street", "city": "London", "postalCode": "SW1A 1AA", "countryCode": "GB" }
      },
      "buyer": {
        "name": "Test Buyer Ltd",
        "vatId": "GB987654321",
        "peppol": { "schemeId": "9932", "id": "GB987654321" },
        "address": { "street": "2 Example Road", "city": "Manchester", "postalCode": "M1 2AB", "countryCode": "GB" }
      },
      "lines": [
        {
          "description": "Professional services",
          "quantity": 1,
          "unitCode": "C62",
          "unitPrice": 100.00,
          "lineTotal": 100.00,
          "vatRate": 20,
          "vatCategoryCode": "S"
        }
      ],
      "taxSummary": [
        { "vatCategoryCode": "S", "vatRate": 20, "taxableAmount": 100.00, "taxAmount": 20.00 }
      ],
      "totalNetAmount": 100.00,
      "totalTaxAmount": 20.00,
      "totalGrossAmount": 120.00
    }
  }'

On /v1/validate and /v1/generate, UK invoices run the full EN 16931 + Peppol BIS 3.0 Schematron; failures carry the relevant BR-* / PEPPOL-* rule id. The response reports profileDetected: "peppol" and a peppolVersion. CreditNote payloads are supported (documentType: "creditnote"). GBP currency round-trips cleanly through cbc:DocumentCurrencyCode.

• Quickstart
• Authentication
• Peppol BIS format reference
• Format overview
• Generate API
• Validation artifacts, Peppol BIS Schematron
• UK Gov consultation: Promoting electronic invoicing
• HMRC and DBT: Roadmap for e-invoicing implementation
• HMRC: E-invoicing requirements