You’ve probably seen a small square code in the payment section of an invoice, sat next to the IBAN. It’s not decoration — it’s a standardized payment code your client can scan to pre-fill a bank transfer. Here’s what it is, and what it isn’t.
What it actually is
It’s called an EPC QR code, defined by the European Payments Council in a specification numbered EPC069-12. In Germany it’s branded GiroCode; in Austria, Stuzza QR; elsewhere in the SEPA zone it’s usually just called an EPC or SEPA QR code. All of these names refer to the exact same underlying standard.
The code encodes the data needed to initiate a SEPA Credit Transfer: the creditor’s name, IBAN, the amount, and a payment reference (plus a few optional fields). Scan it with a banking app and those fields populate automatically — no typing a 22-character IBAN by hand, no risk of transposing two digits.
What it isn’t
It is not currently a legal requirement in Germany, Austria, or at EU level. You won’t be fined for not having one on your invoice. It’s a voluntary, widely adopted convenience standard — not part of the e-invoicing mandate, and not the same thing as ZUGFeRD/Factur-X compliance. You can be fully compliant with every invoicing law and still not have a QR code, and vice versa.
Where it actually works
Bank support has grown steadily since the format launched in 2018, with the strongest adoption in Germany, Austria, Belgium, the Netherlands, Finland, Luxembourg, and the Baltic states — most mainstream banking apps in these markets can scan and pre-fill from an EPC QR code. Coverage elsewhere in the SEPA zone varies; if your client’s bank app doesn’t recognize it, they simply fall back to a normal manual transfer using the IBAN printed next to the code.
Why it’s worth having anyway
Even where adoption isn’t universal, the downside of including one is close to zero — it doesn’t replace the printed IBAN, it just gives clients who can use it a faster path to paying you correctly. For anyone with EU or DACH clients in particular, it removes one small point of friction between “invoice sent” and “money received.”
In Billino
Any EUR invoice you generate with your IBAN on file automatically includes a GiroCode (EPC QR code) in the payment section — no setup required. Your client scans it with their banking app and the transfer is pre-filled with the amount, IBAN, and reference already in place.
