Electronic invoicing isn't new, writes Nigel Taylor of GXS. It started over 40 years ago with business-to-business (B2B) electronic data interchange (EDI) within private networks. With the advent of the internet in the '90s, e-procurement portals appeared and sparked a frenzy of investment into online industry communities. The e-procurement portals focused on sourcing and purchasing activities, and this narrow focus inevitably led to internet portals dedicated to payables processing.