Your French customer has not paid your invoice. The goods were delivered or the service was performed, reminders bounce off a busy accounts department, and your team abroad wonders whether chasing a French debt from another country is worth the legal fees. It is, provided you use the right fast-track procedure from the start. French law gives any supplier, including a company with no office in France, a cheap paper-based route to a court order, automatic late-payment penalties that need no reminder letter, and a rapid provision procedure when the debtor disputes the bill. This guide explains, step by step, how a foreign company recovers an unpaid French invoice: the injonction de payer (order for payment), the fight after an opposition, penalty interest at the European Central Bank rate plus ten points with a 40-euro flat recovery fee, and enforcement through a commissaire de justice (the regulated enforcement officer, formerly called huissier de justice). Every acronym is explained, every key rule is linked to its official text, and every deadline reflects the law in force on 10 September 2026, including the new three-month service deadline that catches many foreign creditors out.
I. How Does a Foreign Company Get a French Order for Payment Against a Customer That Does Not Pay?
A French buyer that stops answering emails is rarely insolvent. More often, your invoice sits at the bottom of a pile, the buyer disputes quality informally without ever writing, or the buyer tests whether a foreign supplier will really sue. The injonction de payer exists precisely for this situation: a one-sided, documents-only procedure in which a judge issues a payment order without a hearing, served on the debtor, who then has one month to oppose. If there is no opposition, the order becomes enforceable and you seize assets. The whole route can be run from abroad through a French representative, and it costs a fraction of a full trial.
A. Can a foreign supplier use the French injonction de payer for an unpaid invoice?
Yes. The procedure is open to any creditor, French or foreign, individual or company, provided the claim itself qualifies. No French establishment, no French bank account and no prior registration with the greffe (the registry office of the commercial court) is required on your side. What matters is the nature of the claim and the court you apply to.
The gateway text is Article 1405 of the Code of Civil Procedure, which states: “Le recouvrement d’une créance peut être demandé suivant la procédure d’injonction de payer lorsque : 1° La créance a une cause contractuelle ou résulte d’une obligation de caractère statutaire et s’élève à un montant déterminé”. In plain English: your unpaid invoice qualifies when it comes from a contract, which covers sales of goods, provision of services, software licences, consulting days, transport, warehousing, and commercial leases, and when the amount is fixed or can be computed from the contract, including any contractual penalty clause. A claim for unliquidated damages after a disputed termination, or a purely tort claim with no contract, does not qualify and must go through the ordinary courts.
For a foreign supplier, three checks decide eligibility in practice. First, the contract test: keep the signed contract or accepted quotation, the general terms of sale, the purchase order, delivery slips or acceptance reports, and the invoice itself. Judges grant orders on papers alone, so the file must speak without you. Second, the fixed-amount test: show the principal, the VAT, the penalty interest computation and the 40-euro recovery fee as separate lines, because the request must contain an exact breakdown, as explained below. Third, the debtor test: the debtor must be identifiable and located in France, whether a company registered in the Registre du commerce et des sociétés (RCS, the French companies register) or an individual professional. If your buyer is a consumer, the competent court is different but the procedure remains available; if the buyer is outside France, European rules apply instead, addressed in Part II.
Territorial jurisdiction is the trap most foreign creditors underestimate. Article 1406 of the Code of Civil Procedure provides: “Le juge territorialement compétent est celui du lieu où demeure le ou l’un des débiteurs poursuivis.” The court with territorial jurisdiction is the court of the place where the debtor lives or is established. The same article adds: “Toute clause contraire est réputée non écrite.” Any contrary clause is deemed unwritten. Read that twice: a jurisdiction clause in your general terms sending disputes to London, New York or even another French city cannot displace the debtor’s court for an injonction de payer. The rule is a matter of public policy, and the judge must raise lack of jurisdiction on his own motion. Concretely, if your customer is a SAS (société par actions simplifiée, the flexible French limited company) with its registered office in Lyon, you file in Lyon, even if your contract says otherwise. File elsewhere and the request is rejected or transferred, losing weeks.
Subject-matter jurisdiction follows the nature of the parties. Against a commercial debtor, the application goes to the president of the tribunal de commerce (the commercial court, the first-instance court for business disputes) or, since the 2025 reform creating the tribunal des activités économiques (TAE, the court for economic activities absorbing commercial courts in stages), to that court where installed; in Paris that is the Paris TAE whose greffe publishes a dedicated order-for-payment page. Against a non-commercial debtor, it goes to the president of the tribunal judiciaire (the general civil court) or the protection-litigation judge. When in doubt between the two, commerciality is assessed from the debtor’s side: an invoice for services supplied to a French company acting for its professional activity belongs to the commercial track.
Language and representation are practical, not blocking. The request and supporting documents must be in French or accompanied by a certified translation; exhibits in English alone slow the file down and some registries return it. A foreign company can file through any authorised representative (mandataire): a French lawyer (avocat) is the standard choice, and companies routinely give a power of attorney signed abroad, with the signatory’s authority evidenced by a company register extract with translation. There is no need for the director to fly to France for the filing itself.
B. Where and how do you file from abroad without losing months?
The filing itself is deliberately light: a requête (written application) lodged with or sent to the court registry, with no hearing and no need to summon the debtor first. Article 1407 of the Code of Civil Procedure requires that “la requête contient l’indication précise du montant de la somme réclamée avec le décompte des différents éléments de la créance, le fondement de celle-ci ainsi que le bordereau des documents justificatifs produits à l’appui de la requête.” The application must state the exact amount claimed with a breakdown of each element of the debt, its legal basis, and a list of the supporting documents attached to it. An application that lumps principal, interest and fees into one round figure, or that forgets the contract, is the classic ground for refusal. Build the file as a judge reads it: contract and accepted terms, order and proof of performance, delivery or acceptance evidence, the unpaid invoice with payment terms, reminders, and any exchange in which the debtor acknowledged the debt or stayed silent after receiving detailed invoices, plus a computation sheet separating principal, penalty interest and the flat fee.
Once granted, the order must be served, and this is where foreign creditors lose cases they had already won. Article 1411 of the Code of Civil Procedure, in its version in force since 1 April 2026, provides: “L’ordonnance portant injonction de payer est non avenue si elle n’a pas été signifiée dans les trois mois de sa date.” The payment order is void if it has not been formally served within three months of its date. Service (signification) means delivery by a commissaire de justice, not a simple registered letter from abroad. The three-month period is short, and it replaced a six-month period that older guides still quote. The Cour de cassation had stated the old rule in these terms: “l’ordonnance portant injonction de payer est non avenue si elle n’a pas été signifiée dans les six mois de sa date” (Cass. 2e civ., 17 Oct. 2019, pourvoi n° 18-18.759). That six-month wording is now history for new orders: count three months from the date printed on the order, instruct the commissaire de justice the day you receive it, and diary the deadline centrally, because a lapsed order cannot be revived and you must start again.
The debtor then has one month from formal service to file an opposition (objection). Article 1416 of the Code of Civil Procedure states: “L’opposition est formée dans le mois qui suit la signification de l’ordonnance.” Opposition is lodged within the month following service of the order. If no opposition arrives within that month, you ask the registry for the formule exécutoire (the enforcement formula affixed to the order), and the order becomes an enforceable title: bank attachment, seizure of receivables, or seizure of tangible assets through the commissaire de justice. If opposition is filed, the procedure converts into an ordinary adversarial case before the court, which is the subject of Part II. Either way, the initial cost stays modest: registry and service fees plus representative fees, with no court fee proportionate to the claim in commercial matters.
Two foreign-specific pitfalls deserve emphasis. First, serving a French debtor while you sit abroad adds no extra step: the French commissaire de justice serves at the debtor’s French address under domestic rules, so you do not need cross-border service conventions. Second, limitation periods keep running in the background. An unpaid commercial invoice is subject to the five-year general commercial limitation period, and a well-built order application interrupts it, but a void order for late service does not give the same safety. File early, serve immediately, and never let the file sleep between the order and the instruction to serve.
II. How Do You Get Paid Fast When the French Debtor Fights Back or Ignores Everything?
Many debtors oppose simply to buy time. An opposition transforms the quick paper procedure into a full hearing, and some debtors then raise vague quality complaints they never put in writing before. Others ignore even an enforceable order, betting that a creditor abroad will not send an enforcement officer. French law answers both tactics: opposition wipes the slate clean but forces a fast hearing on the merits, the summary judge can grant an immediate advance payment called a provision when the debt is clear, and penalty interest plus the flat recovery fee accumulate by operation of law from the day after the payment date, with no reminder required. Combined with direct enforcement and, for cross-border cases, the European payment order, these tools turn an ignored invoice into an expensive liability for the debtor.
A. What happens if the debtor files an opposition, and how do you get a fast provision?
Opposition is a right, not a sanction: any debtor served with an order can object within the month, without giving reasons at that stage, and the case proceeds as if the order had never existed. The Cour de cassation stated the principle bluntly in a 2025 ruling: “le jugement du tribunal se substitue à l’ordonnance portant injonction de payer.” The court judgment replaces the payment order (Cass. 2e civ., 11 Sept. 2025, pourvoi n° 24-14.766). The same decision adds: “l’ordonnance portant injonction de payer, qui n’est une décision qu’en l’absence d’opposition, ne pouvait reprendre ses effets”. The payment order, which counts as a decision only where there is no opposition, could not recover its effects. In practice, the court that received the opposition summons both parties to a hearing and decides the debt from scratch, on evidence. Do not treat an opposition as a defeat; treat it as the start of the adversarial phase you had priced in from the beginning.
Your file at the opposition hearing should already be trial-ready, because the same documents decide both stages. Judges facing a bare denial against a complete paper chain regularly order immediate payment with provisional enforcement. Bring the contract with the applicable payment terms, proof that the goods or services were accepted, which can be tacit where the buyer received detailed invoices, never protested, and continued the business relationship, the full invoice trail, the computation of penalties and fees, and every post-invoice exchange. Silence after receiving precise invoices, combined with continued performance, is consistently treated as acceptance of the billing method, a point illustrated by commercial litigation in which courts upheld invoiced sums that had been regularly communicated and never challenged at the time.
Alongside or instead of waiting for the opposition hearing, consider the référé-provision: an application to the summary judge for an immediate advance on the debt. Article 873 of the Code of Civil Procedure, for commercial courts, provides: “Dans les cas où l’existence de l’obligation n’est pas sérieusement contestable, il peut accorder une provision au créancier”. Where the existence of the obligation is not seriously disputable, the judge may grant an advance to the creditor. The civil-court twin is Article 835 of the Code of Civil Procedure in identical terms. The test is not whether the debtor shouts loudly; it is whether the dispute is serious on the papers. A signed contract, proof of delivery, unprotested invoices and a computation sheet usually meet it, while a documented quality complaint with expert evidence may not, in which case the judge sends the case to the merits court but often sets a rapid timetable.
The provision route is fast, typically weeks rather than months, heard by the president of the court on short summons, and the award is provisionally enforceable: you collect now even if the debtor appeals. For a foreign creditor it has a second virtue: it crystallises the dispute early. A debtor who invents defects only after being sued faces pointed questions about why nothing was written before, and the provision order funds the rest of your recovery. Combine the tracks sensibly: maintain the opposition proceedings, which decide the final amount, and seek a provision in parallel for the undisputed core of the invoice, so cash flows while the remainder is argued.
Where the debtor is outside France but the contract was performed in France, or where both parties are in different EU Member States, the European order for payment under Regulation (EC) No 1896/2006 offers an alternative cross-border track, and the European small claims track may fit smaller invoices. These European routes do not replace the French order when the debtor is French and proceedings run in France; they complement it for genuinely cross-border claims. Ask your representative which track fits your debtor’s location before filing, because switching tracks mid-stream wastes the translation and service budget.
B. How do penalties, the 40-euro fee and enforcement turn delay into the debtor’s problem?
French commercial payment law punishes late payment automatically, and a foreign supplier benefits from it exactly like a domestic one. The backbone is Article L. 441-10 of the Commercial Code, applicable in its current version to invoices due before its deferred repeal takes effect on 1 January 2027. The default rule reads: “le délai de règlement des sommes dues ne peut dépasser trente jours après la date de réception des marchandises ou d’exécution de la prestation demandée.” Failing contrary terms in the conditions of sale or agreed between the parties, the payment period cannot exceed thirty days after receipt of the goods or performance of the service. The parties may agree up to sixty days from the invoice date, or forty-five days end-of-month by express contract without manifest abuse. Beyond the agreed or statutory deadline, penalties run from the day after the payment date shown on the invoice, and the rate, unless otherwise agreed within legal bounds, is: “ce taux est égal au taux d’intérêt appliqué par la Banque centrale européenne à son opération de refinancement la plus récente majoré de 10 points de pourcentage.” The rate equals the interest rate applied by the European Central Bank to its most recent refinancing operation plus ten percentage points. With the ECB rate in recent years, that means a double-digit annual rate running daily on the principal, without any formal demand.
The Cour de cassation has given this automatic character its full force. In a leading commercial decision the court held: “Les pénalités de retard prévues par ce texte, qui sont dues de plein droit, sans rappel et sans avoir à être mentionnées dans le contrat” (Cass. com., 21 Oct. 2020, pourvoi n° 18-25.749). Late-payment penalties under this text are due as of right, with no reminder and without needing to be mentioned in the contract. The same ruling confirms they apply broadly to business-to-business services, rejecting attempts to escape them on the sole ground that the debtor is not a trader, where the debtor contracted for its professional activity. For your invoice, the consequences are concrete: compute penalties from the day after the due date, at ECB plus ten points, attach the computation to the application, and claim them in every filing, because judges award what is asked and documented, not what is merely implied.
On top of penalties comes the flat recovery fee. Article D. 441-5 of the Commercial Code states: “Le montant de l’indemnité forfaitaire pour frais de recouvrement prévue au II de l’article L. 441-10 est fixé à 40 euros.” The amount of the flat compensation for recovery costs is set at 40 euros. Every late-paid business invoice carries it automatically, per invoice, in addition to penalties and without proof of actual collection costs. Where your proven recovery costs exceed 40 euros, such as translation, foreign counsel coordination or enforcement fees, claim the documented excess as damages on top. The general conditions of sale should restate both the penalty rate and the 40-euro fee, as required by Article L. 441-1 of the Commercial Code on payment conditions, but their absence does not deprive you of either, given the automatic nature confirmed above.
Once you hold an enforceable title, meaning an unopposed order with enforcement formula, a provision order, or a final judgment, enforcement runs through the commissaire de justice and works from abroad without your presence. Standard measures include saisie-attribution (third-party attachment, typically freezing the debtor’s bank account), attachment of receivables owed to the debtor by its own customers, and seizure of tangible or intangible assets. Bank attachment is usually the fastest against an operating company: the account is frozen up to the claim amount, the bank declares the balance, and funds are released after the short challenge period. Instruct enforcement promptly after the title becomes enforceable, because ranking among creditors matters if the debtor deteriorates, and monitor insolvency signals through the BODACC (Bulletin officiel des annonces civiles et commerciales, the official gazette publishing insolvency openings). If collective proceedings open, enforcement freezes and you must declare the claim to the liabilities within the statutory period, which is why speed before insolvency is the real strategy.
For continuing relationships, protect the next invoice while recovering this one. Amend your general terms to state a short payment period, the ECB-plus-ten penalty rate, the 40-euro fee plus documented excess costs, a retention-of-title clause where goods are supplied, and, for services, a right to suspend performance after a written notice when an invoice stays unpaid. None of this requires renegotiating French public policy: penalty floors and the flat fee apply regardless, and a clear clause simply makes the next application faster. Companies that set up or already run a French subsidiary can centralise the process further; our hub guide for foreign founders explains the standing framework of bank account, Kbis (the official company identity extract issued by the greffe), VAT and first hires here: Setting Up a Company in France as a Foreign Founder: Bank Account, Kbis, VAT and Your First Hire.
Conclusion
An unpaid French invoice is not a cultural fatality; it is a procedural sprint with three gates. First, file a complete injonction de payer at the debtor’s court, with an exact breakdown and every supporting document, because paper quality decides everything. Second, serve within three months of the order through a commissaire de justice and diary the one-month opposition window, remembering that any opposition replaces the order with a full hearing rather than ending the case. Third, price delay against the debtor with automatic penalties at the ECB rate plus ten points and the 40-euro fee per invoice, seek a fast provision where the debt is clear, and enforce without waiting once the title is final. Run from abroad through a French representative, keep every document in French, and act before limitation or insolvency hardens the file. Done in that order, distance stops protecting the debtor and starts protecting you: the longer the French customer waits, the more the invoice costs them.
Need a quick opinion on your case
If a French customer has stopped paying your invoices, send your contract, proof of delivery and the unpaid invoices for a fast review. Phone consultation within 48 hours with an attorney of the firm: +33 6 46 60 58 22. Or write to us via our contact page with “unpaid French invoice” in your message.