That's my only negative point about this whole system is that money is being pulled away from freelancers and small SME's for every invoice they send.
The big guys just setup an access point and pay the yearly fee as it is nothing compared to their revenue.
Unless you have a very small company you already probably have an accountant or bookkeeper. In most situations, the e-invoicing is provided by your accountant as part of their comprehensive financial management solution. I pay about 120€/mo. for a solution that includes bookkeeping, electronic and traditional invoicing, electronic and traditional expenses management, salary/payroll and all tax declarations for my 1-person company. The effort saved/cost ratio is bonkers, and in the grand scheme of things the monthly fee is marginal.
There might be indeed a usecase for SMEs that don't want to buy a comprehensive financial management solution and instead want to send their e-invoices manually. It's probably a pretty niche usecase and someone could probably provide a "proxy" processor for something like 100€/year. It's still a very marginal cost for almost any imaginable going concern. And to receive any money you anyway need a bank account, which is not free for companies.
> That's my only negative point about this whole system is that money is being pulled away from freelancers and small SME's for every invoice they send.
I don't pay anything to send or receive e-invoices on top of my monthly plan. But I do pay a very small fee to my bank for each transaction they process.