German customers

For German Legal Entities, use scheme 9930 with the VAT identification number (USt-IdNr): DE followed by 9 digits, for example 9930:DE123456788. The DE prefix is required when you register a customer, and the check digit is verified. The number is checked against VIES. Germany does not publish company names through VIES, so a valid number is accepted without comparing the name you declared.

A Leitweg-ID (scheme 0204) is a routing address, originally for public-sector buyers and also used by companies. No registry verifies it automatically, so a customer declared with it alone stays unsupported_scheme and cannot send. Use the USt-IdNr.

Invoices to German buyers

When a German customer invoices a German buyer, the Peppol network requires the seller contact (rules DE-R-002, DE-R-005, DE-R-006, DE-R-007). A legal entity has no contact of its own, so send it in from on every invoice: contactName, phone and email. On a send for one of your customers, everything else in from is stripped; the seller name, address and VAT come from the customer's legal entity.

{
  "number": "RE-2026-0042",
  "sender": { "externalSubTenantId": "customer_8412" },
  "from": {
    "contactName": "Anna Schmidt",
    "phone": "+49 30 0000000",
    "email": "billing@example.de"
  },
  "to": {
    "name": "Käufer AG",
    "peppolId": "0204:10101010-STO-10",
    "street": "Unter den Linden 1",
    "city": "Berlin",
    "postalCode": "10115",
    "country": "DE"
  },
  "paymentIban": "DE89370400440532013000",
  "lines": [{ "description": "Consulting", "quantity": 1, "unitPrice": 100, "vatRate": 19 }]
}

• No contact at all: refused with 422, country_rule_violation, code DE-R-002.
• One field missing: the same refusal, with DE-R-005 (name), DE-R-006 (phone) or DE-R-007 (email).
• The refusal comes before anything is sent, so you can fix the invoice and send it again.
• Invoices to buyers outside Germany do not need the contact: these rules apply only when both seller and buyer are in Germany.
• The same invoices also need payment instructions: a paymentIban or a paymentMeans code (DE-R-001).

POST /v1/validate/server with the same sender reports the same rule in countryRules, so you can check an invoice before you send it.

Testing in the sandbox

A test customer on scheme 9915 has no VAT number, so it cannot send an invoice to a German buyer: a line outside the scope of VAT is refused under DE-R-014, and a line with VAT needs the seller's VAT number (see Sender tax identity mismatch). To test a domestic German invoice, the customer needs a valid USt-IdNr.