Billtrust, a B2B order-to-cash software market leader, today announced imminent changes to European e-invoicing mandates which can affect compliance for B2B companies.

In May 2019, the UK Government issued The Public Procurement Regulations 2019, which included new rules for e-invoicing usage and was the implementation of a European directive. Changes in other European countries will impact UK companies but so will how the UK Government determines how e-invoicing will work for those companies working with suppliers and clients within the European bloc after Brexit. 

Belgium, France and Germany have already signalled that changes are planned as have Poland, Italy and Luxembourg. This is a worldwide trend. More than 100 different countries across the world are mandating e-invoicing with varying local standards and differences in scope (B2B, B2C, B2G) in a variety of digital formats and using a range of technologies. 

On the rise and complexity of e-invoicing

The global e-invoicing landscape is evolving rapidly. The push from governments and tax authorities towards paperless, data-driven and data-focused administrations with the ambition to reduce tax evasion and plug the VAT gap is set to continue into 2023. An Imarc Group report showed that global e-invoicing has doubled in value within the last two years, with a CAGR of 21.5%. Leading analysts are expecting the electronic invoicing market to quadruple by 2035. Close to 50 percent of that growth is expected to come from European countries.

Countries are working to different time frames and mandates and so it is understandable that companies could find compliance confusing especially when operating internationally and having to deal with a multitude of AP channels. Keeping track of the latest developments and updates to these mandates can be difficult, with so many languages and authorities to monitor globally. There are calls for standardisation but, in the meantime, companies who work within Europe need guidance.

“As the current invoicing process lacks structured data formats and delivery channels, only global service providers can help European companies to ensure compliance by helping them with automated solutions that can generate, present, and deliver invoices in a fully compliant manner,” states Marco Eeman, General Manager of Billtrust Europe. 

In 2023 and 2024, major changes are imminent in Germany, France and Belgium: 

• In Germany, B2G invoicing is already mandatory. The various states (Länder) and the Federal Government each have autonomy in deciding how suppliers have to invoice them for public contracts. Some Länder - Baden-Württemberg, Hamburg and Saarland - have already implemented B2G e-invoicing. Others still have to do so. There are discussions within the German Parliament concerning a switch to a B2B e-invoicing mandate in a bid to reduce Germany’s VAT gap. But so far nothing has been decided.
• In France, B2G e-invoicing is mandatory and all economic operators must submit compliant e- invoices to central authorities, regional authorities and local authorities. France is preparing to mandate B2B e-invoicing and it is expected that e-invoicing will become mandatory, across all sectors, for large enterprises from 1st July, 2024; for medium-sized enterprises from 1st January, 2025 and for the rest of the taxpayers from 1st January, 2026. All sizes of companies in France will also be required to receive e-invoices from 1st July, 2024.
• In Belgium, B2G e-invoicing was made mandatory in April 2019. Suppliers of all government levels must now submit e-invoices. The Belgian Government has confirmed it will make B2B electronic invoicing mandatory on a countrywide basis within a broader tax reform project between July 2024- 2025. Belgium would likely use PEPPOL – the European standard – to adapt their current post-audit model to a clearance style model around the same time.

With the majority of current e-invoicing software focusing on e-mail and PDFs – and thus lacking the flexibility and adaptability that the many changes in mandates require, it is not surprising that companies are worried about their invoicing compliance. Billtrust Europe can help them understand the changes, guide them through the regional or country disparities and help them to comply.

“In anticipation of an eventual standardisation, a solution is needed for companies to cope with the major changes in the mandatory field. End-to-end cash service providers – such as the one we offer – compete on all different levels of the financial process of a company, whether it’s risk, billing, collections, controlling or reporting; and can therefore provide a helping hand,” says Marco Eeman. 

Trevor Gosling, co-founder and CEO of Lulalend, says: “We remain grateful to our new and existing investors, who are committed to our mission of driving financial inclusion and catalysing growth in South Africa’s critical SME sector, which accounts for almost 40 percent of our GDP and 60 percent of private sector employment. With their combined support, we will scale our business and bring new products to market to better meet the financing needs of South Africa’s SMMEs.” 

Arul Thomas, Principal at Lightrock, says: “Traditional lenders have historically underserved the SME market, unfairly hindering the growth of companies that make up the backbone of South Africa’s economy. We are delighted to be partnering with Trevor and his dedicated team, who are levelling the playing field for SMEs with their simple, fast, and transparent approach to business finance.”

UK-based FinTech Stubben Edge Group (the Company) has today announced that it has secured a further £5.6m in investment. Once again, the round was oversubscribed and very well received by both existing and new shareholders, giving the Company a pre-money valuation of £175m and representing a 75% uplift on the previous fundraise. It further demonstrates investors’ confidence in the Group which enjoyed topline revenue growth of over 400% in 2022 and is forecasting similar growth this year.

Since the last round in September 2022, the Company has continued to deliver on its ambitious growth strategy, expanding and diversifying its service offerings while also capturing a greater share of the insurance value chain, as shown by the acquisition of London & International Insurance Market specialists Helodrium, Managing General Underwriter (MGU) Cedar Underwriting (both of which remain subject to regulatory approval), and broker distribution platform provider Insurercore, the purchase of which was announced to investors and shareholders in November 2022.

To date Stubben Edge has raised over £20 million. Cornerstone investors include several Lloyd’s names including Nigel Wray, Dowgate Wealth, family offices, institutional investors and other HNW investors.

Chris Kenning, CEO of Stubben Edge, says: “In the context of the wider economic climate and decreasing confidence in the FinTech market, this fundraise is a testament to the strength of our business.

In 2023 our ambition continues to be to support the entrepreneurs and owners of brokers and IFAs. Helping them build their businesses by providing the technology, data and products that will enable them to service their SME clients more efficiently, cost-effectively, wherever, and whenever their clients want to engage.

We continue to challenge the Financial Services industry, a slow adopter of technology which is both arbitrary and unbalanced. We believe that against the current economic environment, it is particularly important to empower brokers and IFAs to provide better value-for-money, security and confidence for customers and their families, while building long-term business success."

David Poutney, Chief Executive of Dowgate Capital, commented: “We were delighted to participate in Stubben Edge’s fundraise once again. The company’s phenomenal growth in 2022, in the current difficult economic climate, showcases that Stubben Edge has enormous growth potential. We believe that Lloyd’s and the insurance industry generally are ripe for disruption and reform and that Chris Kenning and the team at Stubben Edge are well-positioned with their strategy and products to take full advantage of the opportunity in 2023. We’re excited to see them execute on their ambitious plans and look forward to continuing to work with them on their journey.” 

Clausematch, a technology company developing solutions for regulatory compliance, today announced it has released the digital knowledge graph in open source. Regulators and financial services companies now have access to test the graph and see how regulation in a structured digital format works. The AI developments carried out by Clausematch underlying the release of the knowledge graph fundamentally transform the approach to the very understanding of regulation and how it can be delivered.

Clausematch has been involved in a series of projects in this domain with financial services regulators since 2019. Thus, the FSRA of ADGM launched proofs-of-concepts in the digital regulation field where Clausematch was working on knowledge graphs and API-enabled rulebooks digitising ADGM's crypto regulation. The joint team reimagined the regulatory framework by taking the content of regulatory requirements, automatically categorising them using advanced AI models, creating tags focused on regulatory concepts, obligations and expectation. 

With digital regulatory rulebooks, financial institutions will be able to gain a deeper contextual understanding of the current applicable legislation and apply requirements more effectively and efficiently.  The knowledge graph will become a source of digitised rules available for the use of decision automation systems. With the help of AI models, the knowledge graph will extract the understanding of regulations and embed it in a structured, dynamic, machine-executable form. Eventually, this will enable more institutions and firms to foster greater governance practice and transparency in their daily operations being compliant by design.

Vladimir Ershov, Head of Data Science and Machine Learning at Clausematch, said: “There is a growing sense that authorities need to work together to regulate the world more effectively, learn from and leverage each other's experiences, and avoid silos of expertise and skills. By introducing dynamic knowledge graphs in open source, Clausematch proposes an approach where the regulator first digitises its very understanding of regulation by creating models for tagging and for relation extraction and then, these models are released within the regulations for regulated companies. Thus, any company can receive an in-house regulatory advisor to carry on with taxonomy and rules interpretations.”

Speaking on the collaboration, Evgeny Likhoded, CEO and Founder at Clausematch, said: “Regulators need to become active advocates of a new structured approach to regulatory texts. When regulations are digital, it gives a tremendous advantage and capability to businesses to achieve an entirely new level of compliance and transparency. We have been working on these developments since 2019 and we are proud to be releasing the results in an open domain as this can take the industry forward much quicker. Working with regulators and financial services institutions, we are committed to continue to innovate and take compliance to the next level. The more regulators align with this vision of structured machine-readable regulations, the faster we can propel the industry to improve and significantly reduce the cost of compliance.”

It is well known that AI systems can process large amounts of data. The number of processes is increasing and growing. It is necessary to automate the deep analysis of content produced by both parties: the regulators and the regulated firms. By training AI for rule interpretation tasks we can capture the understanding, the very meaning of regulation out of people's heads and put it into digital form so that it can be copied and reproduced an unlimited number of times.

Yan  Shtefanets, VP of Product at Clausematch, added: “It is humans who created complexity in dealing with regulation: different taxonomies, concepts. As a result, we needed to come up with a way to solve it. Collaboration with regulators is one of the most important ways to overcome this on a global level. Each regulator's publication of a new rule or guidance will make it available as structured datasets of regulation in the knowledge graph format, rather than PDF documents. This will make a significant difference because it will allow businesses to adopt changes more quickly, perform gap analysis, and automate impact assessments."

With digital regulatory rulebooks, financial institutions will gain a better contextual understanding of legislation and apply requirements more effectively and efficiently.  The use of technology and innovative RegTech solutions will enable more institutions and firms to foster greater governance practice and transparency in their daily operations.

The elements of the newly released project are already in use in financial services and beyond. Clausematch's AI capabilities benefit customers in a number of ways. The trained models are helping clients identify relationships between internal policies, procedures, obligations, and regulations, which allows them to understand gaps and manage regulatory changes more efficiently. Furthermore, these AI capabilities enhance the policy writing experience by managing consistency and removing contradictions throughout the content. This technology promotes better content comprehension by making it easier to search for, access, and consume. It accomplishes this by allowing users to find answers, not documents.

Digitizing regulation provides unparalleled advantages to consumers and businesses, helping to meet changing requirements and improve efficiency.

To highlight this development and its impact, Clausematch also published a scientific paper on the application of knowledge graph technologies for regulations.

Tarabut Gateway, MENA’s leading regulated open banking platform, announces two new appointments to its management team. 
Oussama Bouhcine joins as Vice President of Customer Success and Services and Derek Lakin joins as Vice President of Engineering.

With over a decade of experience in project management for technology companies, Oussama is a seasoned expert in B2B customer success management. He spent five years at software giant Microsoft, where he served as a Delivery Project Manager and successfully managed multi-million-dollar projects with major corporate clients. Prior to joining, Oussama held the role of VP of Customer Success at Dutch cyber security SaaS provider Zivver. During his tenure, he revamped the customer success management system, and established customer operations for over 7,500 clients.

Similarly, Derek Lakin is a highly experienced Engineering Leader with over 20 years of experience in the software industry, having worked at renowned global technology companies such as Meta, Skype, and Skyscanner. At Meta, Derek held a leadership role in the Ads organisation in the UK and later at the company's headquarters in Menlo Park, California. While at Skype and Skyscanner, he led teams of engineers in the development of new applications and the improvement of existing software services, with a focus on user experience and cloud-native systems at scale.

These senior hires are part of Tarabut Gateway's approach to building the company’s talent pool combining local sector expertise with international experience. These appointments follow a transformative year for the open banking platform. In December 2022, The Saudi Central Bank (SAMA) approved Tarabut Gateway for its regulatory sandbox; the platform was recently selected as the Dubai International Financial Centre’s (DIFC) preferred partner for its Open Finance Lab; it entered partnerships with four leading KSA banks; and became the first regulated open banking service provider in the UAE in April of last year.

Abdulla Almoayed, Chief Executive Officer of Tarabut Gateway, said:

“We are thrilled to welcome Oussama and Derek as Vice Presidents to our growing team. With formidable track records at world-class software companies, they bring valuable experience to meet our high standards for technical excellence and ensure the highest level of customer satisfaction. As Tarabut Gateway looks to strengthen its presence in key markets like Saudi Arabia, and expand to new ones, Oussama and Derek are a fantastic addition to our senior leadership team, and we are proud to have them on board.”

Tarabut Gateway plays a vital role in building the open banking ecosystem’s infrastructure in the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Bahrain. Using the company’s platform-agnostic solutions, traditional financial institutions and fintechs can connect and build their own apps in tandem with Tarabut Gateway’s platform, to power payment services, digital wallets, and other use cases, in addition to a unified and easy-to-use developer portal. 

Working closely with regulators, Tarabut Gateway enables seamless and secure data flows and connectivity between banks and fintechs, supports the creation of a thriving ecosystem, and ultimately provides a better consumer experience. 

Worldline, a global leader in the payments industry, has extended its long-standing relationship with MSC Cruises, the third-largest cruise brand in the world. Working together, Worldline and MSC Cruises will provide a personalised and homogeneous experience to their demanding cruise guests across Europe. Worldline is committed to supporting MSC Cruises in its expansion plans, facilitating their entry in new markets thanks to a plug-and-play solution meeting the highest security standards, and a smooth onboarding process for optimum efficiency.

Demonstrating the depth of its payment expertise within the sector, Worldline is expanding its 11-year commercial relationship with one of the most significant players in the cruise industry, which is enjoying significant expansion in the post-covid tourism pick-up.

Worldline is supporting the growth ambitions of MSC’s operations through a solution that addresses the particular demands of the cruise industry, including a smooth omnichannel payment experience, the acceptance of a broad spectrum of both local and international payment means including quick availability of emerging new payment solutions, and streamlined online as well as card-present processing capabilities.  Worldline’s solution for MSC covers the entire value chain, ranging from a complete e-commerce acquiring solution across Europe to onboard payment terminals to accept passenger payments during sailing. The customisation encompasses MSC Cruises’ specific requirements including refunds and incremental authorisations, thus contributing to the superior traveller experience that MSC is aiming for.

The acquiring solution provided is integrated with MSC Cruises’ own Shipboard Property Management System (SPMS) which simplifies internal payment processes and increases staff efficiency. MSC Cruises also benefits from a state-of-the-art financial reporting tool that makes ease of complex tasks like financial analysis, reconciliation, and fraud detection.

Chris Lanckbeen, Global Sales Director Travel and Hospitality at Worldline, commented: “We are delighted to be able to grow and extend our highly valued, long-term commercial relationship with MSC Cruises. As a leader in their segment, MSC required a sophisticated set of features to support their customer promise, which Worldline, as the main payment partner for their European e-commerce business, is happy to support.”

Stefano Celada, Head of Group Treasury of MSC Cruises added: “Worldline has been able to fulfil our need to develop the most up-to-date and stable acquiring solution for our growing European operations, providing us with the highest quality standards, flexible payment options and increased back-office efficiency. These benefits will help us to deliver our own customers with the best possible travel and payment experience.”

Thanks to its strong foothold in the hospitality and travel industry and its specific expertise in cruise operator solutions Worldline is perfectly placed to support the sector’s growth and enable MSC to offer a significant competitive advantage to all its clients within it.

Going forward, Worldline offers cruise operators like MSC the chance to further enhance their passenger experience by adding innovative value-added services like augmented reality, live shopping, among others to offer a best-in-class user experience.

Coverflex, the flexible compensation solution that allows companies to reduce costs and maximises their people’s earning potential, is announcing a Series A €15 million led by SCOR Ventures. Breega (pre-seed lead investor) re-invested and MS&AD, Armilar, Stableton, BiG Start Ventures and Shilling are also participating, and so are high-profile business angels Firmin Zocchetto (CEO at PayFit), Job van der Voort (CEO at Remote - a client), Nuno Sebastião (CEO at Feedzai), Humberto Ayres Pereira (CEO at Rows - a client), Hugo Arévalo (Co-founder at ThePower Business School), Alessandro Petazzi (Co-founder of Musement), and Davide Dattoli (Founder of Talent Garden), among others.

Coverflex’s all-in-one platform enables any company, of any size, to design, consolidate and personalise their compensation offers with health insurance, meal allowance, fringe benefits and discounts. It aggregates multiple providers and helps companies cut costs with tax-efficient benefits while giving employees more value and improving their financial literacy on compensation and benefits.

The booming “employee benefits & well-being” market is now worth €200 billion, with Europe representing more than 40%. But with employee benefits engagement sitting at less than 20%, companies are wasting billions of euros on unused, one-size-fits-all packages.

“In the current macro environment, this Series A round validates our ambitious vision, product-market fit in Portugal and a market opportunity in Europe, especially in Italy - Edenred’s most profitable market in the world despite having a strong pushback from both merchants and users recently,” says Miguel Amaro, Coverflex CEO. “This round confirms that our focus on adapting human resources processes to the current demand for a more personalised compensation experience is more than relevant today”.

“At SCOR Ventures, our top priority is to build a diverse portfolio of innovative solutions solving risk for individuals, businesses, and our planet. We believe employers have an opportunity to reshape employee benefits management and improve employee satisfaction while closing the care and protection gap using a new generation of tools and services. Coverflex empowers companies and staff to deliver this ambition,” says Will Thorne, Head of SCOR Ventures who joins the company’s board.

Coverflex’s personalised employee compensation service is designed to give its clients a competitive edge in attracting and retaining their most valuable asset: people, which is something Ben Marrel, Co-Founder & CEO of Breega recognises:

“People are companies’ most valuable asset. In one of the most transformative and challenging markets of our time, Coverflex proved its market fit.” He adds: “two years ago we believed that Coverflex would be a game changer. Today, we know it is”.

Since its launch in 2021, Coverflex has been implemented in more than 3,600 companies. Its dedication to solving the unique pain points of customers like Santander, Natixis, OysterHR, Bolt, Emma, Revolut and Smartex has led to +400% growth year-on-year. Currently, at 70,000 active users, who use Coverflex more than 8 times on average per month, the company has processed more than €80 million to their customers’ employees’ wallets. Supporting these operations and growth, Coverflex now has close to 100 employees across Europe and LatAm. This funding round will allow Coverflex to continue growing its team to more than 150 Coverflexers by the end of 2023, mainly in their product, sales and engineering teams.

Now, it seeks to disrupt the meal voucher (“buoni pasto”) and welfare market in Italy, with the launch of a platform with low, sustainable merchant fees to bars, supermarkets and restaurants.

“In Italy, fees go up to 20% per transaction, the highest in Europe for this kind of market. Current providers charge high commissions and pay in 60-90 days, which leads to restaurants and supermarkets opting out of the system” says Chiara Bassi, Country Manager - Italy at Coverflex. “Fewer options equals lower satisfaction for employees, which is why this is a huge opportunity to disrupt the market”.

Lyfeguard, a life planning assistant and document management platform, has launched its financial technology solution in the UK to streamline financial management and planning.

Lyfeguard enables users to store, share and organise important financial information, as well as legal documents, birth certificates, and wills, all through one platform. It then allows this information to be passed securely onto friends, family and trusted advisors, making life and end-of-life management far simpler.

The application also includes important reminders and displays reports and insights into key metrics such as financial health, via its financial dashboard. Up-to-date bank and credit card balance totals auto-populates the financial dashboard using Open Banking technology, through its partner Tink.

Lyfeguard sets out to solve the issue of poor personal information storage and management. Research revealed that the average adult spends 5 years and 5 months of their life on ‘life admin’. Furthermore, there is still £50bn of unclaimed assets in the UK across pensions, banking, insurance and savings, pointing to demand for a simple, all-in-one platform to collate these assets.

Likewise, 54 per cent of UK adults do not have a will, 5.4 million are unsure how to even make one and 81 per cent of adults have not saved any money towards their funeral. Lyfeguard found that this is because death is still a taboo topic in the UK and people often fail to plan for it. As a consequence family disputes happen often: one in three UK adults have fallen out with a relative over the death of a family member.

Data security sits at the core of the platform, and it comes equipped with two-factor authentication for sign-in, as well as AES-256 encryption, which is the gold-standard for data encryption. Lyfeguard also includes 14 other types of security protection, and UK servers are externally monitored 24/7 against threats and attacks.

The platform was founded by serial entrepreneur and founder of Xceed Group, Gary Stewart, as well as a digital marketing expert and business entrepreneur, Fraser Stewart.

Gary Stewart, Co-Founder and CEO, commented on why he founded Lyfeguard: “After the recent death of a close friend, I was asked by his family to sort out his estate. I agreed to help of course, but I must admit to being overwhelmed by the task which was made more difficult because of the grief we were all suffering.”

“Not knowing the location of important information was difficult, particularly when it came to financial and legal documentation. This elongated the grieving process making it harder for all involved.”

“I decided then I wouldn’t want to leave my family in a similar position if something happened to me and so, the Lyfeguard vision was born. Now no one should have to struggle with the same problems I did.”

Fraser Stewart, Co-Founder and COO, said: “We set out to create a solution that resolved the two key problems of poor personal document management and simple end-of-life and legacy planning. Current competitors typically focus solely on the latter, but Lyfeguard strives to make personal and information accessible and useful in life too, for a holistic life planning experience which isn’t just centred around death.

“Lyfeguard is made possible through several partnerships and integrations with APIs, and there are a number of exciting collaborations already in the pipeline to take the platform to the next level.”