ViDA and e-invoicing: what VAT in the Digital Age means for a bank

What the package requires

ViDA is three acts adopted by the Council on 11 March 2025: Council Directive (EU) 2025/516, which amends the VAT Directive, Council Regulation (EU) 2025/517 on administrative cooperation between tax authorities, and Council Implementing Regulation (EU) 2025/518. The bank's own VAT position changes little. The data moving around the bank changes a great deal. Five things matter.

• E-invoicing becomes the default. From 1 July 2030, an electronic invoice is one issued, transmitted and received in a structured format that allows automated processing, following the European standard on electronic invoicing, EN 16931, and its listed syntaxes. A PDF sent by email no longer qualifies.
• Member states can mandate it at home now. Since 14 April 2025, a member state may require businesses established on its territory to issue e-invoices for domestic supplies without first obtaining a derogation, and without needing the recipient's acceptance.
• Cross-border reporting goes digital. From 1 July 2030, intra-EU business supplies are invoiced electronically no later than ten days after the chargeable event, and the transaction data is sent to the tax authority when the invoice is issued.
• National systems converge. Member states that already run domestic real-time reporting have until 1 January 2035 to align their systems with the EU model and standards.
• Platforms and registration. From 1 July 2028, platforms facilitating short-term accommodation rental or passenger transport by road become the deemed supplier where the provider does not charge VAT itself, and single VAT registration measures begin, so fewer businesses must register in several member states.

The dates

The region is moving ahead of the EU date. In Romania, businesses established in the country have sent their business-to-business invoices through RO e-Factura since 1 January 2024. In Croatia, the Fiscalisation Act (Narodne novine 89/25) requires VAT-registered businesses to issue and receive eRačun from 1 January 2026, with the invoice data reported to the Tax Administration; taxpayers outside the VAT system start issuing on 1 January 2027. In Poland, every taxpayer has received invoices through KSeF since 1 February 2026, and the obligation to issue through it applied to the largest businesses from that date and to most others from 1 April 2026. In Slovenia, business entities will exchange only e-invoices with each other from 1 January 2028. Banks in candidate countries meet the same rules through clients with subsidiaries and trading partners in the EU, and through the EU VAT rules their own countries align with on the way to membership.

Where banks get stuck

The package reads like a tax file. For a bank, the question is commercial, not fiscal.

Treating it as a tax project

Because most banking services are exempt, ViDA lands with the tax team and stops there. The larger effect sits with business clients, whose invoicing, receivables and cash planning all change at once.

Seeing the client late

Once invoices are structured and reported within days, a client's finance team knows what it is owed long before the payment reaches its account. A bank that sees only the incoming transfer sees the client's business after the fact.

Receiving e-invoices as a buyer

The bank buys software, premises and services like any large organisation. Where national law requires it, suppliers send structured e-invoices, and accounts payable has to accept, check and post them to the General ledger without re-keying.

Invoicing what is taxable

Some of what a bank sells falls outside the exemption. Those invoices follow the same rules as any supplier's: the national format, the national channel and reporting on time.

Every client, a different provider

Business clients choose their own e-invoicing providers. A bank that asks them to switch, or to upload invoices by hand, loses that conversation before it starts.

What it takes inside the platform

Using ViDA to the bank's advantage depends on bringing the client's invoice data and the bank's own records into one place.

• Connections to the providers clients already use. The client connects its own e-invoicing provider, with no migration and no manual uploads.
• Invoices beside balances and loans. Receivables and payables sit in the same view as account balances and loan repayments.
• Loan schedules from the core. Repayment dates and amounts come from the system of record, so the projection matches what the bank will collect.
• Projections built on real documents. Cashflow weeks and months ahead, built from open invoices, current balances and loan schedules.
• Structured invoices in the bank's own finance processes. Accounts payable reads e-invoices in the national format, and invoices for taxable services go out in the format the member state requires.

Where ABC Tech fits

The ABC Tech SME financial dashboard gives the bank's business clients a financial overview inside the bank's existing digital channels, with balances, invoices, loans and cashflow planning in one view. It connects to the e-invoicing providers business clients already use: several are pre-integrated, and the client picks theirs and connects directly. Loan repayment schedules are read from the core, and projections weeks and months ahead are built from invoices, balances and loan schedules. The dashboard is installed and hosted on the bank's own infrastructure.