About IMDA
In an era of rapid digital advancement, the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) drives Singapore’s transformation into a global digital metropolis. As Architects of Singapore’s Digital Future, IMDA is building a vibrant, inclusive, and innovative digital economy.
IMDA fulfils three key roles in this transformation. As an economic developer, IMDA propels enterprise digitalisation, R&D, and talent development. In the capacity as a regulator, IMDA ensures a trusted digital ecosystem with strong data governance. Finally, acting as a social leveller, IMDA champions digital inclusion, ensuring everyone benefits from progress.
E-Invoicing as Part of The Nation’s Digital Utility
E-Invoicing is part of the digital utilities to help businesses to participate in the vibrant digital economy in Singapore. E-invoicing (branded as InvoiceNow) aims to help Singapore businesses move away from manual invoicing, with fragmented single-sided non-interoperable solutions and at the same time be compliant to tax requirements.
Benefits of eInvoicing:
IMDA started its journey seeking to reap the benefit of e-invoicing for business digitalisation. On the surface, e-invoicing (described as electronic transaction between supplier and buyer exchanged between systems without human intervention) takes away manual effort and increases the efficiency of businesses. An e-invoice network can potentially serve hundreds of thousands of businesses in Singapore and around the region. At the start, we asked “How can we create a widespread network for this, for Business-to-Business financial document exchange?”.
Why Peppol?
IMDA adopted the Peppol Interoperability Framework as it allows direct transmission of e-invoices from one finance system to another finance system without human intervention. Peppol operates on an open network and thus is not limited by the accounting or invoicing package you choose, or the country you live in.
A key concept of Peppol is “connect once – reach all”. Once you are connected to one Peppol Access Point, you are connected to all Access Points on the network, both domestically and internationally, and can reach all businesses that use the services of a Peppol Access Point.
While Peppol remains the underlying framework for business document exchange, IMDA has rebranded Peppol to InvoiceNow to better relate with the Singapore businesses who are familiar with PayNow, the popular e-payment system used in the country.
What Peppol does for Singapore
- Market enabler for interoperable eProcurement solutions
- Facilitates standards-based end-to-end electronic procurement processes
- Agreement framework for network trust, governance and compliance that enables multilateral cross-border interoperability
- Governance through a member-based non-profit organisation
- Enables a significant simplification and improvement of the on-boarding process
- Supports buyers and sellers to trade electronically and fulfil tax reporting obligations, while also achieving more benefits than we initially anticipated. They can be summarised below:
Our Building Blocks in Implementing Peppol
There were many strategic and tactical decisions that were required at various juncture of the initiative. Below are some of the key ones. IMDA started a project office to drive these activities.
Programme Ownership & Government Structure
As the government agency driving digital transformation of the economy, IMDA took on the role of programme owner and set up the E-Invoicing Project Office in 2018 to implement the Nationwide E-Invoicing Network, or InvoiceNow network.
Project Initiation
It was imperative that IMDA’s project office worked in collaboration with various internal and external stakeholders right from the start in opening doors, leveraging capabilities and designing new levers to drive adoption. Internal stakeholders include other partnering agencies in the economic, tax and finance departments. External stakeholders are industry supporters from enterprises, service providers and associations.
Becoming Peppol Authority
IMDA became the Peppol Authority in Singapore in May 2018 and is responsible for approving and certifying Peppol Access Point Providers in Singapore.
As the Peppol Authority, IMDA takes the responsibility of specifying country specific rules and technical standards under the Peppol framework. To create a complete ecosystem of providers, IMDA started accrediting Peppol-Ready Solution Providers (PRSP) in 2019. PRSP evolved to InvoiceNow-Ready Solution Providers (IRSP) in 2024 to incorporate GST InvoiceNow Requirement.
IMDA also governs the compliance and promotes the adoption of Peppol framework in Singapore.
Building Infrastructure
As the e-invoicing network continued to grow, IMDA recognised the need for a robust registration process to enhance the trust on the network and deliver a better end-to-end onboarding experience.
In November 2021, IMDA introduced CorpPass KYC where new participant registrations require an authenticity validation through CorpPass Access Point authorisation.
Benefits of CorpPass KYC:
• Ability to validate authenticity of participant being registered and reduce conflicts
• Streamlined onboarding process that creates efficiency for all stakeholders
• Enhance data integrity by eliminating erroneous letter of authorisations
Developing Ecosystem
The InvoiceNow Ecosystem is comprised of the Access Point Providers, Peppol-Ready Solution Providers and a Service Metadata Publisher (SMP) serving a variety of business needs (divided between large/medium enterprises and small/micro enterprises) across the business community.
IMDA adopted a centralised Service Metadata Publisher model in Singapore and has appointed Singapore Network Information Centre Pte Ltd (SGNIC) as the SMP provider in Singapore.
The Access Point Providers connect to the Peppol Network for transfer of documents in the approved Peppol format and are responsible for the registration of participant IDs in the SMP.
InvoiceNow-Ready Solution Providers offers accounting/ERP solutions that are pre-connected to the Peppol Network so their customers can simply opt-in to register and transact on the Peppol Network. The InvoiceNow-Ready Solution Accreditation service accredits solution providers who want to offer solutions to the market where businesses can send and receive e-invoices through the Peppol Network and submit invoice data to the tax authority, the Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore (IRAS). There are over 200 InvoiceNow solution providers in Singapore. IMDA conducts an annual review and renewal process with the InvoiceNow-Ready Solution Providers.
Developing Strategic Levers/Go-To-Market Strategies
IMDA undertook various strategies and initiatives to grow the network and increase e-invoicing adoption. Example initiatives include past incentive programmes such as E-invoicing Registration Grant, Digital Resilience Bonus, LEAD Connect and Transact, and Solution Uplift Grants. These successfully created numerous opportunities to engage and register interested parties, enabling them to set their solution capabilities to meet IMDA’s requirements. Through the incentive programmes, we have seen significant growth in the number of businesses registered on the network.
IMDA also recognised that government participation was crucial to ensure an uptake in e-invoicing adoption. Therefore, at the start of 2020, the Accountant-General’s Department (AGD) provided government vendors with an additional channel to send e-invoices to the Government over the InvoiceNow network. Through the strong support from the Singapore Government, we have seen more government vendors registered on the network and we continue to see a steady growth in e-invoicing transaction volume with the Government. We are convinced that when more partners of the Government start transacting and benefitting from the network, it will create a network effect where more business partners start making the switch to InvoiceNow and experience the benefits of faster payments, smoother processes, and sustainable business practices for themselves.
Driving Adoption
In today’s digital world, adopting e-invoicing and embracing the benefits is essential for companies to tap into new growth opportunities. Besides incentives programmes and government participation mentioned earlier, IMDA has also developed other customised outreach strategies with trade associations to drive adoption.
Peppol Adoption Timeline
In May 2018, IMDA became the first Peppol Authority in Asia, and 45 Government agencies and private sector entities expressed support for this nationwide e-invoicing initiative. Key steps that we have taken so far:
Operationalising the Peppol Authority
2018
Q1 Announced the nationwide e-invoicing initiative
Q2 Established the Peppol Authority
Q3 Appointed the Service Metadata Provider
Onboarding the Access Point Providers
2018
Q3 Held industry workshop, supported by Peppol expert
Opened Access Point applications and set up the Access Point Community
Q4 Certified and Approved Access Points
Grew the local Access Point Community
Driving Early Adopters
2018
Q4 Started onboarding of large businesses
E-invoicing Go Live
2019
Q1 Launched the Nationwide E-Invoicing Network in Singapore on 9th January 2019
Engaging Public Sector
Q2 – Q4 Engaged the centralised platform owners to enable Government inbound invoices
Engaged the various Government agencies to connect their outbound invoice platforms
Developing Market Awareness
2019
Q1 – Q3 Prepared information on e-invoice website
Q2 Carried out print advertising and organised seminars
Q2 – Q3 Organised roadshows and meetings with large enterprises
Q3 Carried out digital marketing and conducted monthly business briefings
Driving Adoption
2019
Q2 – Q3 Helped large early adopters initiate project and test e-invoice exchange with their business partners
Pushed solution providers to get connected and on-board SMEs
2020
Q1 Inbound invoicing for Singapore Government via Peppol went live providing suppliers to the Government another channel for e-invoicing the Government
Q2 E-Invoicing Registration Grant (ERG) was announced to incentivise businesses to join the network before 31 December 2020
Q4 The Nationwide E-Invoicing Network was referred to as InvoiceNow
2021
Q3 Three Singapore Government agencies, The Housing Development Board (HDB), Jurong Town Council (JTC) and Maritime Port Authority of Singapore (MPA) announced that they are connected to the InvoiceNow network and their customers can start receiving e-invoices from them
Enhanced Network
2021 Q1 Started piloting tax reporting
2022 Q4 Introduced e-Ordering and Invoice Response
2023 Q4 IRAS announced plan to use InvoiceNow for Tax Administration
2024 Q2 PINT-SG launched
Q4 IRAS Sandbox for tax reporting went live
Next Steps
More enterprises across all sectors beginning to start their journey to come on board the Peppol Network and to be ready to meet IRAS’ GST InvoiceNow Requirement. IMDA continues to improve the network resilience, enhance the network and ecosystem capability to support tax reporting and use of additional Peppol documents. We will continue to enhance our test bed to explore new technology and new use cases. This initiative is one amongst many in support of Singapore’s growth in the booming digital economy.
E-Invoicing Project Office
IMDA
Last updated January 2025
You can download the IMDA case study here