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Italy switched to electronic invoicing a few years back. People complained for a while but it turned out to be quite painless in the end.

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How did it compare to the PEPPOL costs and implementation requirements ?

I am surprised that you have to pay for sending invoices. Thats not an issue in Germany.

The problem, as far as I see it, isn't electronic invoicing in itself, or even the format. It's the usage of the PEPPOL network. The network isn't free. Nothing is stopping anyone from creating invoices in UBL format and sending those by email (or any other means). But in countries where usage of the PEPPOL network is required, that's no longer an option.

the old system was free and there were a few public systems that allowed you to manage things manually via web or apps (e.g. chamber of commerce associations, tax agency etc) but most people went through some SaaS service to manage invoices anyway, so my assumption is that the peppol costs would be absorbed by those now.

I'm not an invoice-using resident there so I don't know for sure, sorry.

Edit: quick googling found a few services that allow you to do electronic invoicing (peppol included) for €30/year.

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