How to check if a UK company is on Peppol

The quickest way to check whether a UK company is on Peppol is to search the free Peppol Directory at directory.peppol.eu. You can search by company name or by Peppol ID, for example 9932:gb123456789 (a made-up ID). But the Directory is voluntary, so "not found" does not prove a business is not on Peppol. The definitive check is an SMP lookup, which your service provider can do.

What the Peppol Directory is

The Peppol Directory is a central search service run by OpenPeppol. It collects "business cards" from the SMPs, the registries that record which documents each participant can receive. OpenPeppol's specification explains why it exists: without it, "there are no shared models on how to know the Peppol Participant ID" of a trading partner.

The important limitation is in the same document. Business cards are published "on a voluntary basis meaning that SMP providers can (but are not forced to) publish their client's metadata". Each SMP must support the interface, but publishing is optional.

Step by step: searching the Directory

1. Go to directory.peppol.eu.
2. Type a company name, a VAT number or a full Peppol ID. Searching for the ID (9932:gb123456789) is the most precise. Names often vary ("Ltd" or "Limited", trading names, old names).
3. Use the country filter if offered. UK businesses appear with country GB.
4. Open the result and check:
   • Participant ID: the exact scheme and value to use in your invoices' buyer EndpointID
   • Entity name and country
   • Document types: look for the Peppol BIS Billing 3.0 invoice and credit note
   • Registration date, where shown

Reading a result

A typical UK result looks like this (fictional):

Field	Example
Participant ID	iso6523-actorid-upis::9932:gb123456789
Entity name	ACME WIDGETS LIMITED
Country	GB
Document types	BIS Billing 3.0 invoice and credit note (the page may show a friendly name or the full identifier)

The full invoice document type identifier is:

urn:oasis:names:specification:ubl:schema:xsd:Invoice-2::Invoice##urn:cen.eu:en16931:2017#compliant#urn:fdc:peppol.eu:2017:poacc:billing:3.0::2.1

If only the invoice type is listed, the business may not be able to receive credit notes over Peppol. Check before you need to send one. Some listings show only response messages, such as the Message Level Response (...ApplicationResponse##urn:fdc:peppol.eu:poacc:trns:mlr:3::2.1). That does not mean the business can receive invoices.

Country data is entered by providers and is not always tidy. We saw UK businesses listed with the non-standard code UK as well as GB.

What we saw for the UK (20 October 2026)

A search of the Directory for country GB on 20 October 2026 returned more than 22,000 business cards. Among the results we sampled, most used scheme 9932 (UK VAT number), with a smaller number using 0088 (GS1 GLN) and other schemes. Within 9932, most values were gb followed by nine digits, but some had no prefix. That is why searching by VAT number alone can miss a match. Try both 9932:gb123456789 and 9932:123456789.

These are our own observations from the public search, not official statistics.

If the company is not listed

A missing listing can mean:

• the business is on Peppol but its provider does not publish business cards
• it is registered under a scheme you did not try (for example a GLN rather than a VAT number)
• its name is listed differently
• it is genuinely not on Peppol yet

The reliable test is a lookup through the SML and SMP, the same steps an Access Point performs before every send. Under the SML specification, the sender builds a DNS name from a hash of the recipient's ID, queries it, and gets back the address of the recipient's SMP. If no SMP is registered, the business cannot receive anything over Peppol under that ID. Your Access Point provider can run this check for you. Many providers' portals do it automatically when you add a customer. See Peppol SMP and SML explained.

Checking your own listing

It is worth checking how your business appears:

• Is your participant ID exactly what you tell customers?
• Is the name your legal name, as customers will search for it?
• Are both invoice and credit note listed?
• If you have more than one ID (VAT-based and GLN), are both registered?

If anything is wrong, ask your provider to correct the business card. Only the SMP holding your registration can publish or change it.

For finance teams: checking at scale

If you have hundreds of suppliers or customers, manual searches will not scale. The Directory has a public search interface that returns JSON, and many providers offer bulk lookup tools. Keep your volumes reasonable and follow any usage terms on the Directory site. Store the result (scheme, value, document types, date checked) in your master data, and re-check periodically. Businesses change providers and IDs.

What is not settled

The UK has confirmed Peppol as the core network for the 2029 mandate. It has not said:

• whether UK participants will be required to publish a Directory business card
• whether there will be a UK-specific directory or register of Peppol IDs
• which identifier scheme UK businesses must register under

What to do now

1. Look up your own business in the Directory and fix anything wrong.
2. Check your top customers and suppliers, and record their exact Peppol IDs.
3. For anyone not found, ask your provider to run an SMP lookup before concluding they are not on Peppol.
4. Read Peppol ID UK for how IDs are built.