Switzerland embraces digital invoicing with QR-bill standards and Peppol network participation. GoRoute.ai supports Swiss B2G and B2B e-invoicing requirements.
E-invoicing is mandatory for suppliers to the Swiss federal government. Between businesses it stays voluntary, and adoption is growing through Peppol. Separately, the QR-bill is the standard payment slip, so most Swiss invoices already carry a Swiss QR Code whether or not they travel electronically.
Those are two different obligations, and confusing them is the commonest reason a Swiss finance team thinks it is further behind than it is. The QR-bill governs how a bill is paid: the Swiss QR Code carries the payment data. Peppol governs how an invoice is delivered: a structured document handed from your system to your customer's system without a PDF in between. A company can be fully QR-bill compliant and send nothing electronically, and it can send Peppol invoices to a federal customer while still posting paper to everyone else.
The sections below take each item on the status panel above in turn — the QR-bill, federal B2G invoicing, Peppol access and Swiss VAT — and say what it is, who it touches and what it asks of your accounting system. Switzerland's status panel also lists eBill, the country's domestic billing network for B2C and B2B; it is a separate route from the Peppol network described here. Where an obligation is at stake rather than a preference, confirm it against the Federal Tax Administration rather than against any vendor page, including this one.
| What | Status on this page | Who it reaches |
|---|---|---|
| QR-bill | Mandatory | Anyone billing a Swiss payer |
| Federal B2G e-invoice | Required | Suppliers to the federal government |
| B2B e-invoicing | Voluntary, growing through Peppol | Whoever you and your customer agree |
| Swiss VAT (MWST) | 8.1% standard, plus 2.6% and 3.8% | Every VAT-liable Swiss invoice |
Since 2020, Switzerland has transitioned to QR-bill invoices, replacing the old payment slips. The Swiss QR Code contains all payment information for efficient processing.
Standard QR code format with IBAN, amount, and creditor reference.
Special IBAN format for automated payment processing.
Long-term archivable format with embedded XML data.
Federal B2G
E-invoicing required for federal suppliers
Peppol Member
Full Peppol Authority since 2019
eBill Network
Swiss domestic B2C/B2B billing network
EU Compatible
EN16931 format support for EU trade
Since 2020 Switzerland has moved to the QR-bill, which replaced the old payment slips. The Swiss QR Code printed on the bill carries the payment instruction itself: the creditor's IBAN, the amount, and the creditor reference that tells the payee which invoice a payment settles. The reader scans, the bank fills the payment, and nobody retypes an account number.
Two details decide whether that works in practice. The first is the QR-IBAN, a distinct IBAN format that ties the payment to a structured reference so incoming money reconciles against the open item automatically instead of landing on a suspense account for someone to allocate by hand. The second is the file you keep: a QR-bill issued as PDF/A-3 is a long-term archival document with the structured invoice data embedded inside it, so the human-readable bill and the machine-readable data are one artefact rather than two that can drift apart.
GoRoute generates the Swiss QR Code on every invoice, supports QR-IBAN, and produces PDF/A-3 output with the structured data embedded. Invoices can be issued in German, French, Italian or English, which matters in a country where the language of the bill follows the customer rather than the supplier.
E-invoicing is required for suppliers to the Swiss federal government. This is the one place in Switzerland where sending a structured electronic invoice is not a matter of what you and your customer prefer: a federal supplier has to be able to deliver one, and a PDF attached to an email does not count as an e-invoice for that purpose. Federal B2G invoicing runs over the Peppol network, which is why the two subjects belong together on this page.
Practically, becoming able to invoice a federal customer is three steps, none of which is a rebuild of your finance system. You need an address on the network — a Peppol participant identifier registered so that documents route to you. You need your invoices produced in the structured format the network carries, rather than as a print file. And you need somewhere for the responses to land, because the network answers: a delivered document produces a receipt, and a rejected one produces a message-level response naming what failed.
If you are already invoicing federal customers on paper today, the work is mapping your existing invoice fields to the structured document once, then validating a real invoice before the first live send. Our free sandbox exists for exactly that: send a real document through it and read what comes back before anything reaches a customer.
Switzerland has been a full Peppol member since 2019, with a Swiss Peppol Authority managing participation. Peppol is a four-corner network: you send to your access point, your access point delivers to your customer's access point, and your customer receives in their own system. You never integrate with your customer's software, and they never integrate with yours — both of you integrate once, with the network.
GoRoute is an OpenPeppol-certified Access Point and SMP provider under Peppol ID POP000991. In plain terms: we are approved to send and receive documents on the network on your behalf, and we run the directory service that lets other participants find your address. We register your participant identifier from your VAT number, company registration number or GLN, and every outbound document is validated against the EN 16931 semantic standard and the Peppol BIS Billing 3.0 rules before transmission, so a formatting error surfaces on our side rather than as a rejection from your customer's system. Transport is AS4, encrypted and digitally signed, with delivery receipts on each message. How the Peppol network works sets this out in full.
The same connection reaches the rest of the network, not only Switzerland. That is the argument for choosing Peppol rather than a Swiss-only channel if any part of your customer base sits outside the country: one integration, and the country-by-country differences become our problem rather than yours. E-invoicing country by country shows where each market currently stands.
Swiss VAT — MWST in German, TVA in French, IVA in Italian — runs at an 8.1% standard rate, with a 2.6% reduced rate and a 3.8% special rate, alongside supplies that are exempt. An invoice therefore has to carry the right rate per line, not one rate per document, and the exempt cases have to be shown as exempt rather than as zero-rated, because they are not the same thing in a VAT return.
This is where a structured invoice earns its keep. In a PDF, a wrong rate is a number a person has to notice. In a structured document, the tax category and rate are fields that are validated on the way out, and totals that do not reconcile to their lines fail before the invoice is sent. GoRoute supports the 8.1%, 2.6% and 3.8% rates and the exempt cases, and applies them per line.
Cross-border adds one more consideration. An invoice leaving Switzerland for an EU customer usually has to satisfy the customer's own national rules as well, which is why our Swiss output supports the EN 16931 European standard rather than a Swiss-only layout — the same document can be read by a German, French or Italian buyer's system. Rates and liability are matters for the Federal Tax Administration and your own tax adviser; the formatting and validation are ours.
Automatic Swiss QR Code generation on all invoices.
Support for 8.1%, 2.6%, 3.8% VAT rates and exemptions.
German, French, Italian, and English invoice support.
Seamless invoicing with EU trading partners.
QR-bill compliant, Peppol connected, MWST ready. Start today.
Official source: the Federal Tax Administration — Switzerland's federal tax authority. Always confirm current obligations against the authority directly.
E-invoicing is mandatory for suppliers to the Swiss federal government. B2B e-invoicing remains voluntary but is growing rapidly, with many businesses adopting Peppol for efficiency.
The QR-bill is Switzerland's standard payment slip format since 2020, replacing the old orange and red slips. It contains a Swiss QR Code with all payment information (IBAN, amount, reference) enabling automated processing.
Yes, Switzerland is a full Peppol member since 2019. The Swiss Peppol Authority manages the network, and Peppol is used for federal B2G invoicing and increasingly for B2B transactions.
A QR-IBAN is a distinct IBAN format used together with a structured creditor reference, so that an incoming payment reconciles automatically against the open invoice instead of being allocated by hand. GoRoute supports QR-IBAN on the QR-bills it generates. Whether your own account uses one is a question for your bank.
Switzerland applies an 8.1% standard MWST rate, a 2.6% reduced rate and a 3.8% special rate, and some supplies are exempt. Rates apply per invoice line rather than per document, and an exempt supply is shown as exempt rather than as zero-rated. Confirm current rates and your own liability with the Federal Tax Administration.
Yes. GoRoute's Swiss output supports the EN 16931 European standard and Peppol BIS Billing 3.0, so the same invoice can be read by a German, French or Italian buyer's system. One Peppol connection reaches every participant on the network, not only the Swiss ones.
