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Italy

Policy module: src/events/compliance/policies/it.py (ItalyPolicy, using CertifiedOnlineTicketingMixin).

Issue: #1057

Status

Restricted: online payment blocked for events in Italy.

Paid intrattenimenti (club nights, DJ sets) and spettacoli (concerts, theatre) must be certified with fiscal titoli di accesso issued by a system that the Agenzia delle Entrate (AdE) has recognised as suitable and that is activated with a SIAE card. Online sales must go exclusively through an AdE-approved online system. Revel is not an approved system.

What Revel does

Only online payment is blocked, and only for events held in Italy (physical events whose VAT country is Italy), whoever the organizer is:

  • Scope. An Italian organizer's events held abroad are not affected, and neither are virtual events.
  • Offline payment still works. Paid tiers with offline, bank-transfer or at-the-door payment methods (including pay-what-you-can with offline methods) are allowed and work as before, including the organizer's payment-confirmation dashboard.
  • No online payment method. Creating a tier with the online payment method, or switching a tier to it, is refused (HTTP 422).
  • Existing online tiers. Tiers that already used online payment before the restriction stay editable (rename, pause, switch to offline or at-the-door), but online checkout refuses them, as it refuses paid series passes sold online.
  • Unaffected: free tickets, RSVPs, memberships and attendee invoicing.
  • Ticket notice. Priced tickets for events held in Italy carry an extra line on the PDF and on Apple/Google Wallet passes: "Reservation only: this isn't a fiscal access ticket (titolo d'accesso). The organizer issues it."
  • The common ticket content applies.

The refusal message, naming Italy in the user's language, says that online card payments aren't available for events in Italy, because Italian law requires paid tickets sold online to be issued by a ticketing system approved by the Agenzia delle Entrate, and that payment at the door or by bank transfer still works, with payments confirmed from the dashboard. The organizer issues the fiscal ticket itself.

  • Provvedimento AdE 22 ottobre 2002: activation cards, system suitability (riconoscimento di idoneità, valid 5 years, every change needs prior AdE authorization), certification by an accredited body. The card holder (titolare) must run the issuing system on Italian territory and can issue tickets for third-party organizers. Provvedimento
  • Certification scope: card-only issuance, fiscal seal (sigillo fiscale), single print, unalterable log, signed daily and monthly summaries, retention of ticket data for at least 60 days after the event and summaries for 2 years. AdE, certificazione dei sistemi
  • Provvedimento AdE 27 giugno 2019 n. 223774 (as amended on 25 September 2025): online sales only through AdE-approved online systems; CAPTCHA; for events selling more than 1,000 tickets online, identified buyers, at most 10 tickets per user per event, and deferred ticket delivery. Provv. 27/06/2019, Provv. 25/09/2025
  • Approved systems: AdE keeps a list of approvals per version, including platform-specific variants of approved systems. Elenco provvedimenti di idoneità
  • Overview and forms: AdE, Biglietterie automatizzate, Normativa e prassi (DM 13/07/2000, Provv. 23/07/2001)

The organizer owes the tax and must certify its takings; the titolare of the issuing system must run it correctly and transmit to SIAE. Stripe is only the payment processor.

Open questions

  • Commercial terms and integration interface of a certified-system partner (not public).
  • Who acts as titolare under existing platform variants of approved systems.
  • Exact exemptions for associations, occasional organizers and small taxpayers. Organizers should confirm with their commercialista.
  • Penalties were not researched.

Later layers

  • Medium term: integrate with the holder of an approved system as a provider under src/integrations/providers/ (a "Revel" variant of an approved system, certified by an accredited body). Revel would register venues, organizers and events, request fiscal issuance per ticket at payment confirmation, store and print the fiscal data, handle cancellations as fiscal annulments, and meet the online-sales rules. This is the upgrade path that would lift the online-payment block.
  • Not recommended: Revel becoming its own approved producer and titolare.

See #1057.