Peppol glossary

The Peppol glossary defines the network's core terms. Access Point (your gateway), SMP/SML (the address book), BIS (document specifications), PINT (international invoice profiles), EN 16931 (the European invoice norm) and AS4 (the transport protocol).

Access Point (AP) — a certified gateway operated by a Service Provider; your single connection to the whole network.

AS4 — the secure messaging protocol Peppol uses between Access Points (encrypted, signed, acknowledged).

BIS (Business Interoperability Specification) — Peppol’s document specifications, e.g. BIS Billing 3.0 for invoices.

CIUS — a compliant restriction of EN 16931 (XRechnung, NLCIUS, BIS itself).

CTC (Continuous Transaction Controls) — models where tax authorities see invoice data in (near) real time; the 5-corner model is Peppol’s CTC variant.

EAS / ICD — code lists of identifier schemes used in Peppol IDs.

EN 16931 — the European norm defining the semantic model of an e-invoice.

Peppol Authority (PA) — the national body governing Peppol in a jurisdiction and accrediting Service Providers.

Peppol Directory — an opt-in public search of participants on the network.

Peppol ID — scheme + identifier addressing a participant, e.g. 9950:SK1234567890.

PINT — the international invoice model family (JP, SG, MY, AE, A-NZ specialisations).

Service Provider (SP) — a certified company operating Access Point and/or SMP services under the OpenPeppol agreements.

SML / SMP — the DNS-based locator and the metadata publisher that together make any participant discoverable.

UBL — the XML syntax used by Peppol BIS documents.

Updated: August 29, 2026