ZATCA Wave 25 of E-Invoicing: Is Your Business In, and How to Integrate by February 2027

ZATCA just pulled tens of thousands more Saudi businesses into e-invoicing

On 24 July 2026, the Zakat, Tax and Customs Authority (ZATCA) announced the criteria for Wave 25 of the Integration Phase (Phase 2) of e-invoicing — and it is the biggest expansion yet. The revenue threshold has been cut in half, from SAR 375,000 in Wave 24 to just SAR 187,500. If your business is in scope, you must integrate your invoicing system with ZATCA's Fatoora platform no later than 1 February 2027.

Short answer — are you included? You fall under Wave 25 if your revenues subject to VAT exceeded SAR 187,500 in any single year during 2022, 2023, 2024, or 2025. It does not matter whether your turnover is lower today; one qualifying year in that window brings you in. This is the lowest threshold in the program so far, and it sweeps in tens of thousands of small cafés, boutiques, freelancers, and service providers for the first time.

What is the Integration Phase, and how is it different from Phase 1?

E-invoicing in Saudi Arabia rolled out in two phases. Phase 1, the Generation Phase, began on 4 December 2021 and simply required businesses to stop issuing handwritten or free-text invoices and instead generate structured electronic invoices that include the mandatory fields and a QR code.

Phase 2, the Integration Phase, is a bigger technical step. It requires you to connect your invoicing solution directly to ZATCA's Fatoora platform through an API, issue invoices in a specific structured format (XML, or PDF/A-3 with embedded XML), and add fields such as a cryptographic stamp and a universally unique identifier (UUID) that make each invoice tamper-proof and verifiable by ZATCA.

Clearance vs. reporting: what actually happens at invoice time

Under Phase 2 the flow depends on the invoice type:

• Standard tax invoices (B2B and B2G): follow a clearance model — the invoice is sent to ZATCA in real time and must be cleared before you share it with the buyer.
• Simplified invoices (B2C, retail): follow a reporting model — the invoice is issued to the customer immediately, then reported to ZATCA within 24 hours.

In practice this means your point-of-sale or accounting system can no longer work in isolation. It has to talk to ZATCA continuously, which is exactly why integration is a software project, not a paperwork task.

Will ZATCA tell you if you are targeted?

Yes. Consistent with previous waves, ZATCA notifies the taxpayers in each wave directly, at least six months before their integration date. But waiting for the letter is a poor strategy: six months is tight once you factor in choosing a compliant solution, integrating it with your existing systems, migrating data, and testing against the Fatoora sandbox. The businesses that struggled with earlier waves were almost always the ones that started late.

A practical checklist to get ready

• Confirm your status: check your VAT-subject revenue for 2022 through 2025 against the SAR 187,500 line.
• Audit your current setup: can your POS, ERP, or accounting software issue ZATCA-compliant XML with a cryptographic stamp and connect to Fatoora? Many off-the-shelf systems cannot without an integration layer.
• Choose your path: upgrade your existing system, adopt a ZATCA-certified solution, or build a middleware layer that connects what you already use to the Fatoora API.
• Test in the sandbox: validate your invoices against ZATCA's test environment before going live.
• Train your team and set a go-live date comfortably before 1 February 2027.

Why treat this as an opportunity, not just a cost

Compliance is the deadline, but the real win is what a proper integration gives you along the way: cleaner data, fewer manual entry errors, faster invoicing, and a real-time view of sales. Businesses that connected their systems for earlier waves often discovered they could finally link invoicing to inventory, accounting, and reporting in a single flow — turning a regulatory requirement into an operational upgrade.

How Origami helps

As a technology company, we build and integrate ZATCA-compliant invoicing into the systems you already run. Whether you need a Fatoora API integration for a custom store, a middleware layer for a legacy POS, or e-invoicing built into a new ERP, we handle the technical side — cryptographic stamping, the required invoice format, the clearance and reporting flows, and sandbox testing — so you are ready well before the deadline. If you went through our Wave 24 integration guide, Wave 25 is the same engineering, just a wider net.

Conclusion

Wave 25 is the clearest signal yet that e-invoicing in Saudi Arabia is becoming universal. The SAR 187,500 threshold means most active VAT-registered businesses are now either in scope or close to it. The 1 February 2027 deadline looks far away, but a proper integration takes planning. Check your revenue against the threshold today, and if you are in scope, start early — the businesses that move now will treat compliance as a routine upgrade instead of a last-minute scramble.

Sources

• ZATCA — Criteria for Selecting the Targeted Taxpayers in Wave 25 of the Integration Phase (announced 24 July 2026)
• ZATCA — E-Invoicing roll-out phases