Series: Working Papers. 2619.
Author: Alejandro Casado, Marco Giometti, José E. Gutiérrez, David Martínez-Miera, Alexandra Matyunina and Tammaro Terracciano
Digital transformation
- Other means of payment
- Credit
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Abstract
We document the effects of electronic invoicing (eInvoicing) on credit markets. By making invoices more standardized, verifiable and harder to falsify, eInvoicing changes lenders’ information sets, facilitating invoice-based financing and credit risk assessment. We exploit a regional eInvoicing mandate and administrative credit data using a difference-in-differences design to provide three main insights. First, credit reallocates toward firms already relying on invoice-based credit (“invoice firms”) and away from non-invoice firms. Second, the cost of (non-)invoice credit falls (rises) for (non-)invoice firms, consistent with a supply-driven mechanism. Third, banks’ information production changes: eInvoicing widens (reduces) the dispersion of rates and banks’ risk assessments and improves (worsens) their predictive accuracy for (non-)invoice firms. Overall, eInvoicing reshapes credit market outcomes, with uneven effects across borrowers.