If you invoice from the United Kingdom, you no longer wait for us.
What changed
Before production sending opens, we check that the company behind a Peppol
identity is the one it claims to be. For a UK VAT number — scheme 9932, also
written GB:VAT — that check now runs against HMRC's "Check a UK VAT number"
service, automatically, the moment you register the identifier.
Until today the UK had no automatic check. Our earlier one verified a company registration number, and we withdrew it in August: that identifier is not routable on the Peppol network, so a correct answer authorised sending from an address nobody could reach. Since then, every UK identity was approved by hand.
If you were waiting
You do not need to do anything. UK VAT identifiers that were parked as
Registry not covered (unsupported_scheme) are picked up again by the
verification sweep, which runs every five minutes, and move to their result on
their own.
What we send to HMRC, and what we keep
We send HMRC the VAT number you registered, without its GB prefix. HMRC answers
with the registered name and address; we compare the name with the one you
declared, never use the address, and store neither. Our audit record keeps a masked VAT number and the
verification result. The privacy policy describes this in section 2.4.
The United Kingdom is self-serve
The UK moves from assisted to ready on our countries page. No call with us and no manual approval on our side: you register your VAT number and send.
One exception stays. A UK company below the VAT threshold can join Peppol with a
D-U-N-S Number (0060), and that path is unchanged: we query no registry for
a D-U-N-S Number, so an identity registered under it alone is still approved by
hand. The onboarding guide explains both paths.