GlobalSign (www.globalsign.com), a global Certificate Authority (CA) and leading provider of identity and security solutions for the Internet of Things (IoT), today announced that its popular Digital Signing Service (DSS) supports 2014/55/EU, the newly implemented European Union directive regarding electronic invoicing. The directive defines a common standard for e-invoices to reduce the complexity and legal uncertainty around e-invoicing and make cross-border trade relations easier. As a result of the new regulation, which came into force on April 18, all EU public sector contracting authorities are required to receive and process e-invoices that comply with the standard.

In Europe, the need to guarantee “authenticity of origin” (i.e., the identity of the invoice issuer) and “integrity of content” (i.e., the content of the invoice has not been changed from the moment of issuance) for e-invoices was first established in EU Directive 2006/112/EC on Value Added Tax (VAT). Per the regulation, all VAT registered entities had to meet the requirement in order to maintain compliance. The “VAT Directive” specified advanced electronic signatures as one method for meeting this. Advanced electronic signatures guarantee authenticity and integrity of content by uniquely identifying the sender of the invoice, as well as creating a tamper-evident seal on the invoice contents, such that any changes made to the document after it was signed will be detectable.

“DSS provides the throughput, availability, and fault tolerance needed to support high volume electronic invoice generation. With it, we are easily able to meet the new requirements in the EU. In addition, DSS makes it easy to build advanced electronic signatures directly into existing e-invoice generation workflows without requiring significant development time, PKI expertise, hardware investment or ongoing management,” said Lila Kee, General Manager, Americas, GlobalSign. “Global companies need to plan ahead and apply thought around their current invoicing standards moving forward should there be a requirement to meet cross-border standards into Europe.”

To learn more about GlobalSign’s electronic invoicing capabilities, visit https://www.globalsign.com/en/lp/e-invoicing-directive-dss/.