Around the world, electronic invoicing has had some great developments in the last few months. PayStream has seen amazing progress among governments and businesses as adoption initiatives pick up speed and entire industries see the advantages of eInvoicing networks. Smoothing the way for better B2B collaboration and communication, eInvoicing software empowers global companies to operate strategically and with minimal worry about differing tax and business regulations across borders.

This is especially true for countries in Latin America. Many of these countries have implemented mandatory eInvoicing networks in order to reduce tax fraud and to increase compliance to their complicated VAT systems. While Brazil, Chile, and Mexico are among the leaders in LatAm eInvoicing, other countries in the region are jumping on board.  In addition, solution providers are becoming more competitive as they strive to make software that relieves pressure from buyers and suppliers struggling to keep up with rapidly changing government mandates.

Nations around the rest of the world are taking a cue from Latin America. eInvoicing in Portugal became fully mandatory this past April, while in Italy, an eInvoicing system will be mandatory in February of next year. Indonesia has recently introduced their own VAT-focused eInvoicing system, scheduled to become mandatory by July, 2016. Countries with financial automation systems already implemented are seeing amazing results. In Turkey, the Finance Minister Mehmet Şimşek recently reported that their electronic billing system has saved the country TRY 650 million (around USD 293 million) of extra costs and prevented 100,000 trees from being cut.

Europe in general has taken big steps to promote widespread eInvoicing adoption. They are identifying the issues with their current systems—a recent VAT Gap study by the European Commission estimated EUR 177 billion in VAT revenues was lost due to non-compliance or non-collection in 2012. An additional report revealed the lost revenue equals 16% of total expected VAT revenue by the 26 EU Member State.

In addition, the EU is moving to correct these problems by making eInvoicing more appealing and accessible. In order to promote uniform public information structures, the EU recently designated UBL2.1 as referable standard (mainly applicable for eProcurement). It has also been reported that the alternative finance market in the UK —a great asset for European SMEs—is set to double in size in 2015, with the sector as a whole set to reach a value of GBP 4.4 billion.

In all, the initiatives taken around the world are inspiring and educational. In North America, such widespread adoption efforts are rising at a much slower pace due to differences in business strategies and tax systems. We encourage our North American readers to study the strategies of global companies and apply them to their own business goals. The benefits of eInvoicing are applicable to entire industries and nations—not just individual organizations.To learn more about the global trends in eInvoicing usage and adoption, look out for our upcoming 2014 Global eInvoicing report.