The CBI–Customer to Business Interaction Consortium, created on 20th of may 2008, replacing the Interbank Corporate Banking Association, manages CBI (Interbank Corporate Banking) infrastructure, that allows companies to connect easily, swiftly, and safely with the banks where they hold current accounts, through a single electronic connection. Today CBI’s adherents are roughly 95% of Italian banks and Poste Italiane and over 770.000 Italian companies.

The Consortium aims at maintaining and updating, in Italy and abroad, the technical infrastructure enabling members to interact with clients online, in order to boost interoperability at the national and international levels by offering the CBI Service. In this way the Consortium serves the interest of members and other parties, including public administrations. In particular, the CBI Service includes credit transfers/direct debit orders and cash management, XML based payment, SEPA Credit Transfers and Direct Debit, the “Invoice Financing Request” registered by CBI in the Repository ISO 20022, and document management services such as e-invoicing.

Moreover, the CBI Consortium participates to different international activities in order to ensure the compliance of the CBI service standards to the main international initiatives, with particular focus on e-invoicing working groups (such as UN/Cefact TBG5; Trade Services SEG - Standard Evaluation Group, under ISO 20022 CEN/ISSS - Workshop e-Invoicing, ETSI, EPC/OITS/SPTF, “e-Invoicing Expert Group” promoted by the European Commission).

The recent increase of the e-invoicing relevance is confirmed by the Finanziaria 2008 Law, that established:

• Prohibition to accept paper-based invoices for public authorities, even self-regulated, and other national public bodies
• Prohibition to pay paper-based invoices

In such contest, the CBI’s role could show up as privileged channel for routing of invoices deriving from private intermediaries (such as CBI adherents) to public interchange system (represented by SOGEI-Agenzia delle Entrate)