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Many people asked for the Magento2 version of our popular EU VAT Enhanced module. We were working hard and will release the first version shortly.

We are very proud to announce our membership in the Magento Extension Developers Network (or ExtDN in short). Officially, ExtDN describes itself as: "A network of leading Magento extension developers who share a common vision for a thriving Magento ecosystem with the merchant's success at heart. Collectively, ExtDN members are committed to advancing Magento as the world's leading e-commerce platform for merchants."

That description does perfectly fit with our claim on providing excellent quality as well as outstanding support with the customer (merchant/developer/agency) in mind. And that is also the reason why we wanted to be part of this project. The easier and hassle-free it is to use a Magento extension, the more value you get from it.

We started the development of our first Magento based project in 2009. Back then there was no official documentation for Magento, thus no real guidelines on how to develop for the platform. Every bit needed to be discovered in the code, in books and blog posts written by experts like Alan Storm, Vinai Kopp and many others. Luckily Magento did move things in the right direction with Magento2 and provided documentation. So today we know how to do things in Magento, but there is still the question on how to do things in Magento best to make extensions work seamlessly together. ExtDN and its members will try to give a answer to it.

Every ExtDN member is commited to:

• Innovation in extension functionality and code quality
• Using coding standards without modification of Magento core code
• Collaboration to maximize interopability
• Providing support within short time

We are absolutely convinced that this will push the whole Magento ecosystem one step further and that all Magento users, being it merchants, developers and even the end customers are going to profit from it.

If you want to find out more about ExtDN or even want to join the network, just visit extdn.org.

The EU VIES team implemented a forward from http to https requests on the 17th April 2020. This leads to the situation, for some systems, that you can not validate VAT numbers in your Magento store with the old address (http://ec.europa.eu/taxation_customs/vies/checkVatService.wsdl) anymore.

We are still estimating under what circumstances the issues arises. Not all systems are affected by the issue.

We had already made that change in version 1.7.0 (M2) and 1.8.5 (M1) of our EU VAT Enhanced for Magento extensions, so all you need to do is to update to the latest version and the VAT number validation will be working again on your store.

Updating involves the process of testing everything in a test environment, as there were changes to the module which involve system configuration. At least you have to make sure that the system configuration is all set to your needs.

If you do not want or can not update yourself, we offer our update service.

Another possibility to make it working again with just a little change is as follows:

Magento 1

• Open the file /app/code/local/Geissweb/Euvatgrouper/Model/Validation/Vies.php
• Change the line var $service_url = 'http://ec.europa.eu/taxation_customs/vies/checkVatService.wsdl'; to var $service_url = 'https://ec.europa.eu/taxation_customs/vies/checkVatService.wsdl';

Magento 2 Install in app/code/

• Open the file /app/code/Geissweb/Euvat/Model/Validation/Vies.php
• Change the line var $serviceUrl = 'http://ec.europa.eu/taxation_customs/vies/checkVatService.wsdl'; to var $serviceUrl = 'https://ec.europa.eu/taxation_customs/vies/checkVatService.wsdl';

Magento 2 Composer Install

• Open the file /vendor/geissweb/module-euvat/Model/Validation/Vies.php
• Change the line var $serviceUrl = 'http://ec.europa.eu/taxation_customs/vies/checkVatService.wsdl'; to var $serviceUrl = 'https://ec.europa.eu/taxation_customs/vies/checkVatService.wsdl';

We did not use the https address of the WSDL file before in our extension because in the past years there were problems with the https address. Now it looks these issues were solved and https is the standard at VIES too now, although the website states http addresses everywhere.