Attending the Summit

What does the process that precedes your choice to attend any particular conference look like?

The process evolved over time. Last year, we were mainly focused on attending blockchain related events, like Consensus in New York and Singapore to build a bigger network of like-minded individuals. While it is interesting to attend tech-driven conferences, these events are often aimed at educating businesses about the general use of blockchain technology rather than diving deeply into specific use cases.

We wanted to expand our approach by attending relevant events that would allow us to target our verticals more narrowly. The Exchange Summit in Miami was a perfect example and allowed the viability of Request as an electronic invoicing platform to be challenged directly. The decision to host roundtables and workshops allows us to lead the conversation and get real-time feedback on areas that don’t typically come up in conversation. We can have deep, one-on-one discussions with relevant industry professionals regarding their own uses cases, decomposing them and applying our technology to improve their flows. These opportunities are hyper important to keeping our vision in-line with industry trends and needs.

What was it about the E-invoicing Summit that made you choose to attend?

The Exchange Summit is an event specifically focused at professionals from the invoicing industry, payment industry and organizations that establish standards for financial transactions. As Request develops the infrastructure which unifies those two worlds through a global network, going there was a great opportunity to gather feedback from these actors.

Any particular reason why you decided to do a roundtable? And what were your goals for the roundtable?

The goal of the roundtable was to talk through our technology and gather feedback from industry professionals about their own needs. It is very interactive, especially when contrasted with a presentation on a stage, which tends to be more one-directional communication.

By engaging with folks one-to-one we were able to dive more deeply into their needs and test exactly how Request can be used to add value and where it was less relevant

Summit experience

The E-invoicing Exchange Summit holds multiple conferences around the world throughout the year. Given that this is a large summit dedicated to E-invoicing, can you share some examples of organizations or use cases from the conference that demonstrate trends that are forming within the industry?

The overwhelming trend was the move away from paper invoices and towards fully electronic systems with machine-readable data. In order to facilitate interoperability, some common frameworks have developed. PEPPOL is one of the leading frameworks with it’s innovative and inclusive 4-corner model and battle-tested background.

Check out this video to learn a bit more about PEPPOL’s background.

Other countries outside of Europe are beginning to adopt the PEPPOL standard including Singapore and Australia. Once a uniquely European initiative, this worldwide adoption is a strong signal that there is a demand for interoperable electronic invoicing frameworks to facilitate easier domestic and international trade.

How do the long term goals of Request tie into this?

Interoperability and a borderless world economy remain 2 of Request’s core tenets and it was exciting to engage with other organizations driven by the same vision. Although Request makes electronic invoicing data accessible from anywhere in the world, a common data structure is an important piece of the puzzle that will facilitate innovation and automation. With representatives from government, industry and data structure experts the dialogue advanced rapidly and is moving toward an agreed upon standard that will help us achieve our long term goal of an inclusive, interoperable and efficient global economy.

There were multiple discussions around E-invoicing and blockchain use cases, including an entire day deep dive workshop on blockchain for corporations. Can you explain the level of interest in blockchain solutions (such as Request) in the E-invoicing world?

Very strong. As one of the few blockchain based electronic invoicing technology providers at the conference we answered many questions from people with diverse professional backgrounds. We educated country representatives, existing service providers, data structure and payments experts (to name a few!) about the advantages of Request based electronic invoicing. This audience was remarkably well versed in blockchain technology allowing us to accelerate the conversations into areas more relevant to Request. Almost every actor was interested in blockchain in some way — the level of interest remains consistently high throughout the industry.

During the summit, would you say people and organizations were interested in Request specifically as an invoice solution?

Yes. In fact, when speaking about Request to different parties the concept was widely accepted with the only major stumbling blocks being throughput and cost. With both of these issues being solved by v2 of the protocol participants were keen to talk about what an implementation would look like for their businesses or organizations.

Some of the more compelling use cases we discussed were:

integrations with real-time payment systems (RTPs) being built in the US which would facilitate instant invoice fulfillment in fiat currencies; and

projects in Latin America and Africa which would allow businesses in these countries to have easier access to foreign markets and reduce their existing invoice management costs.

Request’s roundtable title was “Blockchain — Bridging Smart Invoices and Payments” and had a goal of sharing the benefits of using a blockchain system. Can you expand on this and what subjects were discussed?

One particularly interesting use case was seeing how blockchain could be integrated into PEPPOL’s 4-corner model as both a way to store data, but also to communicate that data effectively.

Existing PEPPOL 4-corner Model

In the existing model, Buyers and Sellers choose whichever Service Provider they’d like to use to access PEPPOL. They can also choose whichever electronic format they prefer for their business operation. The Service Provider handles the transformation of the preferred data format into the PEPPOL format, resulting in completely standardized traffic.

Buyers and Sellers still choose whichever Service Provider they’d like to use to access PEPPOL and their preferred electronic data format. The Service Provider still handles the data transformation, but rather than storing this data on their own database, they use Request to broadcast it to the blockchain. This has the effect of ensuring that the data remains immutable, making the system trustless for all parties.

This also has the effect of turning the communication of the data between Service Providers from the existing DNS based process to being always accessible to relevant parties. The Service Provider can now pull the data from Request whenever they need it.

The end result is data that is more secure and easier to communicate between Service Providers. Buyers and Sellers also gain by having an assurance against data corruption or manipulation.

This summit was held in the United States and there was a “Key Topic” about giving an update on the U.S. E-invoicing Standardization. Request is aimed at being a framework that enables E-invoicing systems to create, exchange and process requests for payments through a global network. Can you give an overview on how things are changing within the U.S. and how Request could fit into or help support these changes?

The US currently has PEPPOL certified Service Providers operational in the country, and are in the midst of considering other standardized ways to more efficiently do business domestically and internationally. However, talks are still ongoing and no decisions have been taken. Request could be used in conjunction with an established framework (like PEPPOL) or as a standalone tool that supports any data format the US decides upon to facilitate more effective data storage and sharing. Request would also streamline the invoice payment process, resulting in invoices getting paid more quickly and fewer resources being spent on invoice management.

Conclusion

After your experience in Miami, will you be attending the E-invoicing Exchange Summits in Vienna & Singapore later this year?

We have been invited to participate in both the Vienna and Singaporean Summits later this year and are particularly keen on Vienna. In addition to being the larger of the 2 conferences, our European presence and growth strategy align nicely with the participants slated to attend.

Do you have a concluding story or comment you would like to share to the Request community about the summit?

It was a great experience getting our ideas challenged by experts. A lot of attendees have been involved with electronic invoicing for the better part of the last 10 years and were keen on what Request was bringing to the table.