e-Fatura vs e-Arşiv: A Practical Guide for Foreign Companies Buying from Turkish Suppliers (2026)

If your company sources from Turkish suppliers, in 2026 you no longer receive paper invoices — you receive electronic documents in one of two formats: e-Fatura or e-Arşiv (Faturası). The two look nearly identical to a finance-ops AP clerk, but they're routed and validated differently. Understanding the distinction matters for your three-way matching, VAT recovery and accounts payable automation.

Quick definition

e-Fatura is a B2B electronic invoice issued by an e-Fatura-registered Turkish taxpayer to another e-Fatura-registered Turkish taxpayer. It is transmitted through the GİB (Turkish Tax Authority) infrastructure: the supplier signs it, sends it to GİB, and GİB delivers it to the buyer's e-Fatura inbox. The buyer cannot reject the document silently — there is a formal accept/reject window.

e-Arşiv is the everything-else format: B2C transactions, transactions to non-registered companies, transactions to foreign customers, and transactions where the buyer is exempt from e-Fatura. The supplier transmits e-Arşiv directly (typically by email with a PDF + XML attachment) and reports a copy to GİB asynchronously. There is no formal acceptance loop.

For a foreign buyer (your company, headquartered outside Türkiye), you will almost always receive e-Arşiv because you are not registered in the Turkish e-Fatura system.

Why this matters for your AP team

Three operational consequences:

1. Validation source differs. For e-Fatura between two Turkish registered taxpayers, GİB is the source of truth — you can verify online via the GİB portal. For e-Arşiv issued to a foreign buyer, you receive it directly from the supplier; you must validate the supplier's signature certificate yourself or trust the PDF.

2. Format and content rules differ slightly. Both follow UBL-TR XML, but e-Arşiv has a few mandatory fields specifically for foreign-buyer cases (your foreign tax identifier, country code in the Customer field, SUM in TRY plus the original currency). If your supplier's ERP doesn't handle this correctly, you'll get warnings during VAT reclaim.

3. Cross-border VAT recovery hinges on document type. If your country has a VAT-recovery process for invoices from Türkiye (most EU member states do, under directive 2008/9/EC if reciprocal), you typically need the original e-Arşiv XML + PDF + supplier's certificate chain. e-Fatura recovery is generally not applicable to foreign buyers because e-Fatura is not the right instrument for cross-border B2B.

What you should ask your Turkish suppliers

1. "Send me the XML, not just the PDF." The XML is the legally binding document. The PDF is a human-readable representation.
2. "Issue it as e-Arşiv with my correct foreign tax ID and country code." If they issue it as e-Fatura by mistake, GİB will reject it because you're not in their inbox system.
3. "Confirm the QR code resolves to a valid GİB record." Every legitimate e-Arşiv has a QR code linking to a GİB-hosted verification page.
4. "Provide the certificate chain." For VAT recovery audits, you need to prove the digital signature on the XML chains back to a recognised Türkiye CA.

How to validate an e-Arşiv document yourself

Each document includes:

• An XML payload (UBL 2.1 / UBL-TR)
• A digital signature (XAdES) from the supplier or their integrator
• A PDF rendering (visual representation, not legally binding on its own)
• A GİB-routed verification URL (typically embedded as a QR code)

Validation steps for your AP automation:

1. Parse the XML, extract Invoice/UUID and Invoice/IssueDate
2. Verify the XAdES signature against the supplier's certificate
3. Confirm the certificate chain ends at a Türkiye-recognised CA
4. Hit the GİB verification URL; expect HTTP 200 with the same UUID
5. Cross-check the totals against the PDF (sanity check)

Most modern AP automation tools (Coupa, SAP Ariba, Tipalti) can ingest UBL-TR if you point them at the right schema; otherwise build a lightweight parser — it's 200 lines of Python.

The 4 mistakes foreign AP teams keep making in 2026

1. Treating the PDF as the document. The XML is the legal record. If you only archive PDFs, your VAT recovery audit will fail when the auditor asks for the signed XML.

2. Not requesting the document type explicitly. A Turkish supplier whose ERP defaults to e-Fatura might try to issue you one and then puzzle over why GİB returns "buyer not found." Specify e-Arşiv up front.

3. Confusing e-Arşiv with the legacy e-Fatura Portal. GİB ran a free portal for small businesses that has been deprecated in 2026. Documents issued through it after the cutover date are invalid; insist your supplier uses a GİB-registered integrator (Logo, Uyumsoft, QNB Edebiyat, Birasyo, etc.).

4. Storing without retention discipline. Türkiye's tax retention is 5 years minimum, 10 years for e-Defter. EU buyers should mirror the longer retention for cross-border VAT audit windows; storing only for 90 days because "we accepted the invoice" creates exposure.

Birasyo for the supplier side

Birasyo is GİB-registered and issues all four electronic-document types (e-Fatura, e-Arşiv, e-İrsaliye, e-Defter) included in every plan with no per-document fee. For foreign-buyer scenarios, our e-Arşiv module:

• Auto-detects foreign buyer and applies the correct UBL-TR profile
• Inserts the foreign tax ID and country code in the right fields
• Renders a bilingual PDF (TR + EN, optional DE/FR/ES)
• Bundles XML + PDF + certificate chain in a single ZIP for email transmission
• Provides a QR code that resolves to GİB verification

If your Turkish supplier struggles with e-Arşiv quality, share this article with them. If they switch to Birasyo, we'll handle their migration in 5 business days — no downtime to your supply.

Closing

e-Fatura and e-Arşiv are not interchangeable jargon — they are operationally distinct documents with different transmission paths, different validation sources and different VAT-recovery implications. Get this right and your AP automation runs clean. Get it wrong and you spend Q4 reconciling line items to PDFs.

Want a deeper conversation? Our team supports foreign procurement leads as well as Turkish suppliers — book a call.

Related reads:

• Turkey's January 2026 e-Invoice Reform — Compliance Cheat Sheet for Foreign Suppliers
• ERP Selection Checklist for Foreign Investors in Türkiye
• Working with a Turkish CPA Inside Your ERP