The electronic invoice (e-invoice) is a necessary first step to achieving straight-through processing for business-to-business (B2B) payments. An e-invoice offers an opportunity to reduce manual effort for both buyers and suppliers—while supporting multinational compliance.
The Federal Reserve has worked collaboratively with the Business Payments Coalition (BPC) to promote greater adoption of e-invoices, payments and electronic remittance (e-remittance) data to ultimately improve the efficiency of the U.S. payment system. Through this partnership, industry work group efforts have supported the development, testing and implementation of an exchange framework, a virtual network that facilitates the exchange of e-invoices and e-remittance information.
What is an Exchange Framework?
An exchange framework is an electronic delivery network based on a set of technical standards and policies to allow businesses to securely share electronic supply chain documents with one another. It was developed to solve the difficult issues businesses face when exchanging invoices between different platforms and systems, such as how to connect to other businesses, what information to send and how to deliver it electronically. As a solution to these challenges, the exchange framework outlines a set of standards to securely exchange electronic documents, such as an e-invoice between businesses – even if each business uses different software.
Digital Business Networks Alliance’s Exchange Framework
In 2023, participants of the BPC’s E-invoice Exchange Market Pilot launched a market ready exchange framework and established the Digital Business Networks Alliance (DBNAlliance) as the legal entity to oversee it.
Through an oversight role, DBNAlliance assists service providers in connecting to the exchange framework and is responsible for defining electronic delivery standards, policies, rules and guidelines for e-invoicing. Furthermore, DBNAlliance is governing the exchange framework that is available to all businesses via their service providers. Service providers interested in connecting to the exchange framework first must join the Digital Business Networks Alliance.