E-invoicing in the UAE

E‑invoicing will become mandatory in the UAE for business-to-government (B2G) and business-to-business (B2B) transactions from July 2026. Business-to-consumer (B2C) transactions are not currently included in the mandate, but this is likely to change in future phases.

The UAE uses a Decentralised Continuous Transaction Control and Exchange (DCTCE) model based on the Peppol 5-corner framework, facilitating real-time exchange and validation of invoices via accredited service providers (ASPs).

How the e‑invoicing process will work in the UAE:

1. Issuer (Corner 1) sends an e‑invoice to the issuer’s ASP (Corner 2) for validation and conversion to official UAE format (e.g., PINT AE XML).
2. The ASP transmits the invoice to the recipient’s ASP (Corner 3) and simultaneously reports the tax data document (TDD) to the Federal Tax Authority (Corner 5).
3. The recipient’s ASP validates and delivers the e‑invoice to the recipient (Corner 4) and reports the TDD to the FTA.
4. Throughout, status updates flow between ASPs to indicate successful validation.

Failure to issue valid e‑invoices can result in fines and affect VAT input recovery eligibility.