You live in London, New York, Dubai or Singapore and you want a French SAS or SARL, but you have no office, no flat and no friend willing to lend an address in France. The bank asks for proof of premises before it opens the capital deposit account, the Guichet unique (the single online company registration portal run with the INPI, the French intellectual property and companies institute) blocks your filing when the address proof is weak, and the greffe (the registry office of the commercial court that keeps the RCS, the Registre du commerce et des sociétés, the French trade and companies register) returns the file with a request for a proper lease or domiciliation contract. Many foreign founders then upload a friend’s utility bill, a virtual mailbox receipt or a foreign home address, and discover weeks later that the Kbis (the official company identity certificate issued by the greffe) never arrives, the BODACC (the Bulletin officiel des annonces civiles et commerciales, the official gazette for company notices) never shows the incorporation, and the VAT number never comes. This guide explains how to give your French company a lawful French registered address from abroad, how the domiciliation contract works, and what happens when mail, summonses and registry duties pile up at an address nobody reads.
A domiciliation is not a mailbox trick. It is a regulated contract with an approved provider that lends you its address as your siège social (registered office), holds your legal books, receives your notifications and reports you to the greffe and the tax office when you disappear. French commercial law treats proof of premises as a condition of registration, controls who may sell domiciliation, imposes a minimum written contract with quarterly reporting, and punishes ghost addresses with court orders, fines and ex officio removal from the register. Run from abroad, the system works well when you pick an approved domiciliataire (domiciliation provider), file the exact contract the greffe expects, read your mail every week through a tracked channel, and update every change before the registry judge moves. Leave the address to chance and a bailiff, the URSSAF (the social security collection agency) or the tax office will serve at the only address you declared, while the landlord of the flat you borrowed without permission sues for lease termination. For the wider incorporation sequence, read our pillar guide on setting up a company in France as a foreign founder: bank account, Kbis, VAT and first hire, then use this article as the address track that runs underneath every other filing.
I. Give your French company a registered address from abroad without signing a commercial lease
A. Prove premises to the greffe: what the single portal accepts and what it rejects
Every legal person that asks for RCS registration must prove that it occupies the premises where it places its seat. Article L123-11 of the Commercial Code states that any legal person applying for registration must show enjoyment of the premises where it installs, alone or with others, the seat of the business, or, when the seat sits abroad, the agency, branch or office established on French territory. The same article adds that domiciliation of a legal person in premises shared by several companies is allowed under conditions set by decree in the Council of State, and that the decree also details the equipment or services needed to show that the seat is real. Founders who file from abroad through the Guichet unique therefore need one of three proofs: a commercial lease or sublease in the company name, a compliant domiciliation contract with an approved provider, or, in narrow cases, the home address of the legal representative. A hotel invoice, a co-working hot-desk receipt without a domiciliation approval, a foreign address alone, or a friend’s address without a contract and supporting title, does not meet the test. The greffe examiner checks the title deed or lease of the provider, the approval reference, and the consistency between the declared seat, the attached contract and the identity of the representative, and the filing stalls until the chain is complete.
When several companies share the same address, the applicant must attach the domiciliation contract signed with the owner or leaseholder of the premises. Article R123-167 of the Commercial Code provides that any natural or legal person that places its company seat in premises it will share with one or more companies must present, with the registration request, the domiciliation contract concluded for that purpose with the owner or leaseholder. The same paragraph extends the rule to any legal person whose seat sits abroad and that installs its agency, branch or office in France in shared premises. In practice the Guichet unique upload must contain the signed contract, the provider’s approval order, the provider’s own lease or title, and the representative’s identity and contact details kept in the provider file. Article R123-169 of the Commercial Code adds that the domiciliation contract is recorded in the RCS with the name and registration references of the domiciliataire, so the link between your company and the provider becomes public and searchable on the Kbis. Companies of the same group that install their seats in the same premises of which one of them has enjoyment are the only exemption: Article R123-170 of the Commercial Code states that companies and their subsidiaries that place their seats in the same premises of which one has enjoyment are not required to sign a domiciliation contract between themselves. Outside that group exception, no shared address works without a written contract on file.
Using the home of the legal representative is possible but framed, and it traps foreign founders who borrow a French friend’s flat. Article L123-11-1 of the Commercial Code allows any legal person to place its seat at the home of its legal representative and carry on an activity there, unless legislation or contract terms say otherwise. When such legislation or contract terms exist, the representative may still place the seat at home for a period that cannot exceed five years from creation nor run past the legal, contractual or court-ordered end of the occupation, after prior written notice to the landlord, the condominium syndicate or the building representative. Before that period expires the company must, on pain of ex officio removal, send the greffe proof of its change of situation under conditions set by decree, and the article recalls that neither a change of use of the building nor the commercial lease regime results from this option. For a founder who lives abroad and names a French-based president, this means checking the residential lease, the condominium rules and any loan agreement before declaring the flat, notifying the landlord in writing before filing, and diarying the five-year exit. For the founder who names himself while living outside France, his foreign home cannot serve as the French seat of a French company that needs a French address for service, tax and social bodies, and the filing will be sent back for a French lease or domiciliation contract. Individuals face a mirror rule: Article L123-10 of the Commercial Code requires natural persons to declare the business address and prove enjoyment, allows shared-premises domiciliation under decree conditions, and lets them declare their dwelling as the business address only when no legislation or contract term opposes it.
The Versailles Court of Appeal shows what happens when a company seat is parked in a rented flat against the lease. In a judgment of 6 February 2024, RG 22/05818, available at Cour de cassation 65c3366f11f78b0008e3e6b8, the court recalled that “Par ordonnance de référé du 14 décembre 2020, le juge des contentieux et de la protection du tribunal de proximité de Courbevoie a notamment ordonné à Mme [D] de procéder au changement de domiciliation des sociétés dont le siège social est à l’adresse des lieux loués.” The tenant argued that the company was only an administrative address without clients or goods, kept alive to collect unpaid invoices and receive residual mail, while the landlords pointed to formal notices, the court order and the company name on the intercom instead of the tenant name to prove professional use of a dwelling let strictly for housing with all professional activity banned. The court examined whether a later postal domiciliation contract had cured the breach and confirmed the first judgment on substituted grounds. Foreign founders should read this case as a warning against the shortcut of registering the SAS at a friend’s or employee’s flat without written landlord consent and without checking the lease destination clause: the landlord can seek termination, the judge can order the company to move its seat, and the company ends up with two disputes, one over the lease and one over the RCS address, both visible to banks and future buyers.
B. Sign a domiciliation contract with an approved provider and keep it alive from abroad
A domiciliation provider cannot be a simple mail forwarder operating from a dwelling. Article L123-11-2 of the Commercial Code states that domiciliation activity cannot be carried on in premises for use as a main dwelling or mixed professional use, which already excludes the friend’s flat model. Article L123-11-3 of the Commercial Code then requires prior approval by the administrative authority before RCS registration, granted only to persons who make available premises with a room suited to confidentiality and to regular meetings of the management, administration or supervisory bodies plus storage and consultation of the books and registers required by law, who own the premises or hold a commercial lease over them, who meet clean-record conditions including no final conviction for crime and no prison term of at least three months without suspension for listed fraud, breach of trust, money laundering, corruption, forgery, criminal association, drug trafficking, procuring, company law offences, bankruptcy, usury, undeclared work under Articles L8221-1 and L8221-3 of the Labour Code patterns, tax fraud and foreign financial relations offences, who have not lost a domiciliation approval as a disciplinary measure in the last five years, who are not under personal bankruptcy or prohibition measures under Book VI, and who show anti-money-laundering training under decree terms. Article L123-11-4 of the Commercial Code extends the clean-record test to legal-person providers by checking shareholders holding at least 25 percent of votes and managers, requires each secondary establishment to meet the premises conditions, and orders that any major change in activity, installation, organisation or management be reported to the authority. Article L123-11-5 of the Commercial Code subjects providers to the anti-money-laundering duties of the Monetary and Financial Code. From abroad, the founder’s due diligence is therefore simple: ask for the prefectural approval order number, check that the approval covers the exact site named in the contract, verify that the provider owns the building or holds a commercial lease rather than a residential lease, and refuse any provider that cannot produce these two documents before payment.
The contract itself is scripted by regulation, and the greffe knows the script by heart. Article R123-168 of the Commercial Code requires a written contract for at least three months renewable by tacit renewal absent termination notice. On the provider side, the domiciliataire must be RCS-registered during the occupation, must make available premises with a room suited to confidentiality, regular meetings of management bodies and storage of books and records, must keep for each domiciled person a file with supporting documents on the personal home and phone contacts of natural persons or the home and phone contacts of the legal representative for legal persons, plus proofs for each business location and for the place where accounting records are kept when not held at the provider, must inform the court clerk when the contract expires or ends early that domiciliation has ceased, must also inform the commercial court clerk or chamber of trades when the domiciled person has not collected mail for three months, must give enforcement bailiffs holding an enforceable title the details needed to reach the domiciled person, must send the tax office and social collection bodies each quarter a list of persons domiciled or departed during the period and each year before 15 January a list of persons domiciled on 1 January, and must show the approval references in the contract. On the company side, the domiciled person undertakes to use the premises effectively and exclusively as the company seat or, when the seat sits abroad, as agency, branch or office, to tell the provider of any activity change, to declare any change of personal home for natural persons or any change of legal form, object, name and personal home of persons with habitual signing power for legal persons, and gives the provider a mandate, which the provider accepts, to receive all notifications in its name. A contract that omits the approval number, the three-month term, the confidentiality room description, the mail mandate or the file clause will be flagged, and a contract signed with an unapproved mailbox company will be rejected outright, delaying the Kbis by weeks while capital sits frozen in the blocked deposit account.
Keep the contract alive after registration because the provider becomes your first compliance sensor. Pay the quarterly fee by direct debit from the French business account rather than by foreign card that expires, designate two mail contacts with phone numbers that actually answer, and set a weekly routine: the provider scans every envelope header, you confirm receipt, and originals of tax assessments, URSSAF demands and court summonses travel by tracked courier or secure electronic channel the same day. Tell the provider before any change of director, share transfer, activity extension or accounting firm move, because the provider file must mirror the RCS and the quarterly tax and social lists will expose any gap. Calendar the renewal date even though tacit renewal applies, since termination for unpaid fees leads the provider to notify the greffe of cessation, and the RCS then shows a company without premises, which triggers the judge. If you plan to leave the provider for a real office, sign the commercial lease first, file the seat transfer, wait for the updated Kbis, and only then terminate the domiciliation, so the company is never without a declared seat for a single day. If you keep the provider for years, visit once a year, check that the meeting room and archives exist in reality and not only on paper, and keep invoices and proof of effective use, because tax and social auditors treat a purely fictitious seat as evidence of broader unreliability.
II. Run mail, summonses and registry duties at that address or lose the company on paper
A. Receive every summons and tax letter at the domiciled seat: why service there binds you
French procedure serves legal persons at their establishment, which for a domiciled company means the provider address, and hands the paper to a person empowered to receive it. Article 690 of the Code of Civil Procedure provides that notification to a private-law legal person or industrial and commercial public establishment is made at the place of its establishment, and absent such a place, on one of its members empowered to receive it. Combined with the R123-168 mandate by which the domiciled company authorises the provider to receive all notifications in its name, this means a bailiff, the URSSAF or the tax office serves validly by handing the constraint, assessment or summons to the provider reception when the manager on site declares herself empowered, and time limits to oppose, appeal or pay start running that day whether the founder in Austin or Berlin has read the scan or not. The Cayenne Court of Appeal illustrates the fight that follows when service through the domiciliataire is challenged. In a judgment of 5 May 2025, RG 24/00025, available at Cour de cassation 684bb0ab6ad0da0123b35562, the collecting body argued that “La [9] soutient par ailleurs que la contrainte du 7 octobre 2022 a bien été signifiée à l’adresse du siège social de la société [14] conformèment aux dispositions de l’article 690 du code de procédure civile, et qu’elle a été signifié à la gérante de la société de domiciliation qui a déclaré être habilitée à le recevoir.” The company replied that the service act was void, that without regular service the body held no enforceable title, and that the later seizure order should fall with it. The court separated the fate of the constraint from the fate of its service and ruled “DECLARE NUL l’acte de signification en date du 2 novembre 2022 de la contrainte n°810969 du 7 octobre 2022 d’un montant total de 56 138€,” while rejecting the requests to declare the underlying contribution claims time-barred or ill-founded and ordering costs and a 2,000 euro payment under costs rules. Foreign founders should draw three lessons: service at the provider address can be valid and starts deadlines, defects in the service act are litigated document by document and do not automatically kill the underlying tax or social debt, and only a complete service file with the bailiff report, the empowerment statement and the proof of actual address on the service date allows a court to decide.
Unclaimed mail is not neutral: after three months without collection the provider must report you to the clerk. The same Article R123-168 of the Commercial Code that creates the receipt mandate orders the provider to tell the commercial court clerk when the domiciled person has not acknowledged mail for three months, and to tell the clerk at expiry or early termination that domiciliation has ceased. The clerk file then signals a company that cannot be reached at its declared seat, which feeds the registry judge docket, alerts counterparties that check the company record, and weakens any later claim that a missed summons or tax notice should be set aside for lack of knowledge. Bailiffs with an enforceable title can also obtain from the provider the details needed to reach you, so changing phone numbers and emails without updating the provider file does not hide the company, it only ensures that the next service happens at the provider desk without your input. Build a simple mail discipline: a shared inbox that the provider copies on every scan, a weekly 15-minute review with your French accountant or lawyer, a log that records date of receipt, sender, deadline and owner, and a rule that any letter from the greffe, the tax centre, the URSSAF, a bailiff or a court is forwarded within 24 hours. When a dispute arises, that log proves diligence, supports a request for extra time where the law allows it, and avoids the worst outcome where a default judgment or a final constraint is enforced while the founder insists he never knew.
B. Keep the Kbis, RCS and BODACC chain clean: update, file and answer the registry judge
The Kbis reflects the RCS, the RCS feeds the BODACC, and banks, clients, landlords and courts read that chain before they trust you. The provider address appears on the Kbis, the RCS entry records the domiciliation contract with the provider name and registration references under Article R123-169 of the Commercial Code, and incorporation, seat transfers and director changes are published in the BODACC so third parties can rely on them. A company whose provider contract has ended without a replacement shows a seat that no longer exists, a director who cannot be served, and accounts filed from an address the clerk knows is dead. Banks freeze account openings and loan files when the Kbis address and the proof of premises diverge, landlords refuse commercial leases when the RCS still shows an old domiciliation, and buyers discount a target whose registry history shows gaps. File every change from abroad through the Guichet unique before the contract ends: seat transfer with the new lease or new domiciliation contract, director arrival or departure with identity and address proofs, activity change with the updated wording, and accounting year-end with the filing of annual accounts at the greffe within the statutory meeting and filing sequence described in our calendar guide. Keep each new Kbis, each BODACC notice and each filing receipt in one corporate file shared with the provider, the accountant and the lawyer, so any counterparty check returns the same current address everywhere.
The registry judge can order you back into compliance under penalty and erase you when you ignore him. Article L123-3 of the Commercial Code allows the supervising judge, on his own motion or at the request of the public prosecutor or any interested person, to order a trader who missed registration to apply, under penalty if needed, and to order any registered person who missed required filings to complete or correct entries, fix inaccurate or incomplete declarations, or seek removal, under penalty if needed, with clerks routing decisions between courts until the competent supervising judge is seized. For home-seat companies the sanction is even more direct: Article L123-11-1 of the Commercial Code warns that before the five-year home-seat period expires the company must send the greffe proof of its change of situation on pain of ex officio removal. In daily terms, the sequence runs from a clerk notice to a judge order with a daily fine, then to removal, and each step is served at the declared seat through the provider mandate, so an unread mailbox accelerates the sanction instead of pausing it. A removed company keeps its debts but loses its ability to prove its existence with a fresh Kbis, to open or keep a bank account, to sue or to sell, and revival requires a court application, back filings, penalties and a new address proof, all harder from abroad under time pressure. Answer every greffe letter within days, file the missing proof rather than arguing by email, and where a deadline cannot be met, have a French lawyer request an extension with evidence of the signed lease or new domiciliation contract already in hand.
Practical fixes from abroad follow a short checklist that avoids the classic traps. First, never file a seat at an address whose owner or leaseholder has not signed: for a commercial lease, attach the signed lease and the landlord title; for a domiciliation, attach the R123-168 contract, the prefectural approval and the provider lease or title; for a representative home, attach the housing title, the prior written notice to landlord and building bodies, and the diary entry for the five-year move. Second, align VAT, tax and social addresses on day one: the VAT registration, the corporate tax file at the impots.gouv.fr centre (the French tax authority portal), and the URSSAF employer file must all show the same seat, because divergent addresses trigger cross-checks and site-visit requests that a ghost address cannot survive. Third, give a French-based contact a written power to sign receipts, collect originals and file urgent updates: the provider receives notifications but does not sign corporate filings for you, so a lawyer or accountant with an express mandate closes the gap when you sleep in another time zone. Fourth, separate the domiciliation from any professional activity at the provider site: the contract gives you a seat and meeting access, not a full-time workshop or shop, and storing stock, receiving the public or running machines there without the right lease and permits breaches the contract and the planning rules. Fifth, prepare the exit before you need it: keep three months of provider fees in reserve, keep a draft seat-transfer file ready, and never terminate the old contract before the new Kbis is issued. Companies that follow this routine pay a modest quarterly fee and keep a clean registry history; companies that chase the cheapest unapproved mailbox pay the same fee twice, once to the mailbox and once to the lawyer who repairs the radiation.
Conclusion
A French company without a French address cannot be registered, cannot be served and cannot be trusted, but a foreign founder without a French office can still build a solid seat from abroad. Prove enjoyment of premises with a document the greffe recognises, which in most cases means a written domiciliation contract of at least three months with an approved provider that owns its building or holds a commercial lease, shows a confidentiality room and archive capacity, keeps your identity and accounting-location file, records the approval number in the contract, reports your arrival and departure to the clerk, tax office and social bodies, and holds a mandate to receive your notifications. Avoid the dwelling shortcut unless the lease, the condominium and the statute allow it, notify before filing, and move before the five-year limit on pain of removal. Treat the provider desk as your legal front door under Article 690 of the Code of Civil Procedure: read mail weekly, log deadlines, forward court, bailiff, tax and URSSAF papers within a day, and never let three months pass without collecting, because the provider must report silence to the clerk and the registry judge will act at the only address you gave him. Keep the Kbis, RCS and BODACC aligned on every move, answer clerk notices with filings rather than explanations, and hold a French mandate-holder ready to file when you are offline. With that discipline the domiciliation costs a predictable subscription and protects the bank account, the VAT number and the contracts; without it the address becomes the dispute, as the Versailles lease litigation and the Cayenne service litigation both show for opposite reasons, one where the company should never have been registered at the flat, the other where service at the registered seat decided the fate of a 56,138 euro constraint. Choose the approved address first, keep it live every week, and change it cleanly when the business outgrows it.
Need a quick opinion on your case
You are creating or running a French company from abroad without a French address and need a compliant domiciliation, a filing that the greffe accepts, and a mail routine that catches every deadline. The firm offers a phone consultation: 80 EUR including VAT, within 48 hours with a lawyer of the firm. Call +33 6 46 60 58 22 — Maître Reda Kohen. Send your draft domiciliation contract, provider approval number and target registration date through our contact page before the call so the advice is concrete.