You wired 80,000 euros from London, Dubai or Singapore to keep your French company alive, the accountant booked it as an advance on a shareholder current account, and now that you ask for the money back the company answers that the cash is needed, that a bank asked for the account to stay blocked, or simply stops replying. You live abroad, the money sits in France, and you wonder whether that transfer was a loan you can reclaim, a contribution you can only recover through dividends, or money you have already lost. French law gives a clear answer to the first question: an advance paid by a shareholder to his own company is analysed as a loan, and the shareholder becomes a creditor of the company, a position the official business portal of the French administration states in plain terms on its page dedicated to shareholder current accounts. But creditor status is only the starting point. Whether you recover next month or in several years depends on the agreement you signed or failed to sign, on a possible blocking arrangement imposed by a lender, on the tax treatment of the interest, and on the procedure you choose to force repayment from another country. This guide walks through those four layers in order, explains every French acronym along the way, and gives you the documentary checklist that makes recovery possible without boarding a plane. If you have not yet created the company, our companion guide to setting up a company in France as a foreign founder, from bank account to Kbis to VAT and first hire describes the entry road, from the blocked capital deposit to the Kbis extract, which is the official identity card of the company issued by the greffe, the registry office of the commercial court.

I. What French law calls your money: a shareholder current account, not capital

A. How to document the advance from abroad so it stays a repayable loan

The shareholder current account, known in French as the compte courant d’associe, is the everyday tool through which founders fund a French company outside the share capital. The mechanism is simple: instead of subscribing new shares, which requires a formal capital increase filed on the Guichet unique, the national one-stop online portal for company formalities operated by the INPI, the French intellectual-property and companies office, the shareholder leaves cash at the disposal of the company, either by wiring funds or by leaving in the company sums already owed to him, such as unpaid salary or undistributed dividends. The administration’s business portal describes the result without ambiguity: the current account of a shareholder is analysed as a loan that gives the lending shareholder the status of a corporate creditor, and the terms of that loan, meaning its remuneration, duration and repayment conditions, are set in the articles of association or in a current account agreement signed between the company and the shareholder. That creditor status is what separates the advance from the capital contribution. Capital is repaid only through a formal reduction of capital or at liquidation after every creditor has been paid; a current account is a debt the company owes you, recorded as a liability on its balance sheet, and in principle repayable on demand.

Almost anyone around a French company can hold such an account, which is good news for a foreign founder. The official guidance lists shareholders and partners who are natural persons regardless of the number of shares held, the company’s officers such as the gerant, the manager of a SARL, the French limited-liability company with rigid statutory rules, or the president of a SAS, the flexible simplified joint-stock company most foreign founders choose, and commercial companies whose accounts are certified by a commissaire aux comptes, the statutory auditor, for short-term group loans. There is no shareholder current account in an individual business, but that exception does not concern you if you incorporated a SARL or a SAS. The practical consequence is that your transfer from abroad qualifies from day one, whatever your percentage holding, provided the paperwork identifies it correctly. A wire labelled as a capital contribution, or worse an unlabeled transfer the accountant books wherever convenient, can take months to requalify, while a transfer documented from the start as an advance on current account creates a clean, dated receivable in your favour.

Documentation is therefore the first battleground, and distance makes it harder, so build the file as if you already expected a dispute. Before or just after wiring, sign a current account agreement, called a convention de compte courant, with the company, represented by its legal representative, stating the amount, the currency, the interest rate or the absence of interest, the repayment terms, and the absence of any blocking commitment unless a lender requires one. Keep the SWIFT or SEPA confirmation showing the debit of your personal foreign account and the credit of the company’s French account, with a payment reference mentioning the advance on current account. Ask the French accountant for the general-ledger extract showing the credit to your individual current-account sub-ledger, and check that the annual financial statements carry the balance as a liability toward shareholders rather than burying it in miscellaneous debts. Minutes of a shareholders’ decision acknowledging the advance add useful weight, particularly in a SAS where the president who signs both sides of the agreement may later face questions about regulated agreements. None of these documents requires your presence in France: electronic signature, scanned minutes and email exchanges with the accountant are enough, provided the amounts, dates and account numbers match across every piece. A file where the wire, the agreement and the balance sheet all tell the same story is a file a French court enforces; a file made of a bare wire and oral promises is a file the company can contest line by line.

Two prohibitions frame the practice and both protect the foreign lender who understands their direction. The prohibitions run against money flowing from the company to its managers, never against money flowing from the shareholder to the company, so your advance is lawful while the reverse operation would be void. In a SARL, the Commercial Code provides that “A peine de nullité du contrat, il est interdit aux gérants ou associés autres que les personnes morales de contracter, sous quelque forme que ce soit, des emprunts auprès de la société, de se faire consentir par elle un découvert, en compte courant ou autrement, ainsi que de faire cautionner ou avaliser par elle leurs engagements envers les tiers”, a rule available on Légifrance under Article L.223-21 of the Commercial Code. The same ban applies to directors and chief executives of larger companies under Article L.225-43 of the Commercial Code, and it is extended to the president and officers of a SAS by Article L.227-12 of the Commercial Code, which states that “Les interdictions prévues à l’article L. 225-43 s’appliquent, dans les conditions déterminées par cet article, au président et aux dirigeants de la société”. Read these texts in the right direction and they confirm your position: the company cannot lend to you if you manage it as a natural person, but nothing in them stops you from lending to it. The only neighbouring fence is the banking monopoly, since Article L.511-5 of the Monetary and Financial Code provides that “Il est interdit à toute personne autre qu’un établissement de crédit ou une société de financement d’effectuer des opérations de crédit à titre habituel”. An occasional advance by a shareholder to his own company, documented as ancillary to the shareholding, is not a habitual lending business, but the text explains why the agreement should present the advance as support for your own company rather than as the first of a series of loans to third parties.

In a SAS, one additional formality deserves attention from the foreign shareholder who is also president or who holds a large stake. Agreements between the company and its president, one of its officers, or a shareholder holding more than ten percent of the voting rights fall under the regulated-agreements procedure, and Article L.227-10 of the Commercial Code requires that “Le commissaire aux comptes ou, s’il n’en a pas été désigné, le président de la société présente aux associés un rapport sur les conventions intervenues directement ou par personne interposée entre la société et son président, l’un de ses dirigeants, l’un de ses actionnaires disposant d’une fraction des droits de vote supérieure à 10 % ou, s’il s’agit d’une société actionnaire, la société la contrôlant au sens de l’article L. 233-3”. Your current account agreement with your own SAS therefore belongs in that report, and the shareholders vote on it. The sanction is measured rather than fatal, since an unapproved agreement still produces its effects while the interested person bears any harmful consequences for the company, but a clean vote protects the advance against later attacks by a co-shareholder or a new auditor who might otherwise describe it as an undocumented related-party deal. Ask the accountant each year whether the balance and the interest appear in the report, and keep a copy: from abroad, that single page often proves the company itself recognised the debt.

B. When the company can lawfully make you wait: blocking agreements and court grace periods

The most frequent shock for a foreign lender is learning that the account is blocked, which in French practice means the company is no longer obliged to repay the funds and can treat them as quasi-permanent resources. Blocking never happens by accident: it results either from a unanimous decision of the shareholders in general meeting or from a blocking agreement, called a convention de blocage, signed between the company and the shareholder, and it typically serves as security when a bank grants a loan to the company. The bank wants assurance that the shareholder will not drain the cash the day after the loan is disbursed, so it makes the financing conditional on the shareholder immobilising his current account for a defined period, sometimes with a subordination clause meaning the shareholder is paid only after the bank. If you signed such an agreement, whether at the bank’s request or because the company’s survival required it, a repayment demand served during the lock-up period will fail, and a court will enforce the contract you signed. The lesson for founders approached by a French bank while living abroad is to read the blocking papers as carefully as the loan offer itself: negotiate a fixed end date rather than an open-ended commitment, cap the blocked amount, exclude future advances from the lock-up, and require the company to notify you when the bank loan is repaid so the account unblocks automatically.

Absent any blocking arrangement, the position reverses completely in your favour, and this is where many companies tested by a foreign shareholder miscalculate. The administration’s guidance states that where the articles and the agreement say nothing about repayment, the shareholder’s claim is repayable at any time, and that when the shareholder demands repayment the company cannot refuse it, even by invoking financial difficulties, nor limit repayment to what its cash position can bear. That statement surprises founders used to common-law thinking, where directors can simply plead that repayment would put the company at risk, but French practice treats the shareholder lender as a genuine creditor whose claim does not bend to the debtor’s convenience. The company’s only lawful shield in that situation is to ask the court for time, not to refuse outright. The Civil Code gives the judge that exact power: Article 1343-5 of the Civil Code provides that “Le juge peut, compte tenu de la situation du débiteur et en considération des besoins du créancier, reporter ou échelonner, dans la limite de deux années, le paiement des sommes dues”. The judge weighs both sides, your need for the funds against the company’s situation, can spread payment over a maximum of two years, may attach reduced interest or require guarantees, and suspends enforcement in the meantime, but the debt itself survives intact. From abroad, expect this defence whenever the company is illiquid: it delays recovery but also confirms the claim, and instalments ordered by a court are paid far more reliably than vague promises.

Three boundary situations complete the picture and each calls for a different reflex. First, if the company enters court-supervised insolvency proceedings, known as a procedure collective, it loses the right to repay your current account voluntarily, and you must declare your claim to the court-appointed representative or liquidator like any other creditor, within the statutory deadline stated in the opening judgment’s publication. The official guidance confirms the consequence: after such proceedings open, the company may no longer repay a shareholder current account, the shareholder declares alongside the other creditors, and repayment comes only after preferential creditors and only if the finances allow. In practice the shareholder lender ranks as an unsecured creditor, called chirographaire, paid at the bottom of the ladder, and a blocking or subordination agreement can push recovery even further away. The operational lesson is to act before the insolvency, not after: a demand served and enforced while the company is merely struggling beats a declaration filed in a liquidation where nothing remains. Second, if a co-shareholder or a new manager argues that your advance was really a hidden capital contribution or a gift, your signed agreement, the ledger entries and the regulated-agreements report described above defeat the recharacterisation, which is precisely why that paper trail matters. Third, if the company has already been struck off the trade and companies register, called the RCS, without paying you, a court-appointed liquidator can in some cases be designated to complete the liquidation, a route our guide to closing a French company from abroad through dissolution, liquidation and strike-off examines from the company’s side. The common thread is timing: every month spent waiting without a formal demand narrows the options, while a documented demand served early keeps all of them open.

Time limits deserve a paragraph of their own because founders living abroad discover them late. Your claim for repayment is a personal action for payment, and Article 2224 of the Civil Code provides that “Les actions personnelles ou mobilières se prescrivent par cinq ans à compter du jour où le titulaire d’un droit a connu ou aurait dû connaître les faits lui permettant de l’exercer”. Since a current account repayable at any time becomes due when you demand it, the practical rule is to serve a clear written demand as soon as repayment matters to you, then to follow it with proceedings before five years run from that demand, rather than letting the balance sleep in the accounts for a decade. Each formal acknowledgement of the debt by the company, such as signed financial statements listing your balance or a letter proposing a repayment schedule, restarts useful evidence of recognition, but do not rely on informal reassurances by email to preserve your rights. Calendar the deadline from the first demand, diarise it alongside the company’s annual approval of accounts, and treat the fifth anniversary as a hard wall. Courts apply limitation strictly, and a well-documented claim filed in year six is worth no more than no claim at all.

II. Interest, tax and forced recovery without returning to France

A. What interest you can charge and what tax each side pays

Interest on a shareholder current account is lawful, useful and tightly fenced, and the three fences are the written rate, the deductibility ceiling and your own taxation as lender. Start with the written rate, because everything else hangs on it. The Civil Code allows agreed interest to exceed the statutory rate whenever the law does not forbid it, but it imposes one formal condition, available on Légifrance under Article 1907 of the Civil Code: “Le taux de l’intérêt conventionnel doit être fixé par écrit”. An oral understanding that the advance bears five percent is unenforceable as interest; only a rate written into the agreement or the articles counts. The administration confirms the commercial logic behind the rule: the current account is a loan granted to the company, it can be remunerated like a bank loan through interest, and where the shareholder is a natural person that remuneration is optional, so you may also lend at a zero rate if you prefer simplicity. Where the lender is itself a company, a zero-rate advance can attract the attention of the tax administration as an abnormal management decision, so intra-group advances should always carry a market-consistent rate. From abroad, the practical choice for an individual founder is usually a modest written rate that compensates the immobilisation without creating a tax dispute, or an explicit zero rate that closes the debate entirely.

The company’s deduction of that interest is where the mathematics bites. Interest paid to shareholders is in principle a financial charge deductible from the company’s taxable profit, but the deduction survives only within two cumulative conditions restated by the official business portal: the share capital must be fully paid up, meaning the shareholders have actually paid in everything they subscribed, and the rate applied must not exceed the reference rate published by the tax administration for the financial year in question. That reference rate moves with market conditions and the company’s closing date; recent tables published on the official portal show it drifting from above five percent toward roughly four and one third percent over the year to autumn 2026, so an agreement signed two years ago at six percent may now generate partly non-deductible interest. The statutory backbone of the ceiling sits in the General Tax Code, known by its French acronym CGI, and the key provision for advances between related companies is Article 212 of the General Tax Code, which keeps such interest deductible only “Dans la limite de ceux calculés d’après le taux prévu au premier alinéa du 3° du 1 du même article 39”, with a narrow escape where the borrowing company proves it could have obtained the same rate from an independent bank. The broader deductibility framework lives in Article 39 of the General Tax Code, and the administration’s detailed commentary in the BOFiP, the official online tax doctrine database, reference BOI-BIC-CHG-50-50-30, works through the rate limit year by year. Each current account is examined separately with no offsetting between an excessive account and a cheap one, so a founder holding two advances at different rates cannot average them. Before signing, ask the accountant to confirm that the capital is fully paid up and to compute the current reference rate for your closing date; a rate set one point too high quietly converts part of your interest into non-deductible cost for the company you own.

Your own taxation as a non-resident lender is the mirror image and it surprises many founders twice. First, the interest is income in France: the General Tax Code treats as taxable income interest and similar products from claims, cash deposits and current accounts, and Article 124 of the General Tax Code lists among them “les intérêts, arrérages, primes de remboursement et tous autres produits” including at item 4 “Des comptes courants”. The company paying you interest must therefore operate the French levy applicable to interest paid to a person established abroad, file the corresponding return with the DGFIP, the national tax administration, and pay over the amount withheld, leaving you to claim any treaty reduction afterwards through the reclaim procedure of your country of residence. The applicable bilateral tax treaty may reduce or reallocate the taxing right, but the treaty does not apply itself: the French paperwork must be filed first, with proof of your foreign tax residence, before any refund flows. Second, the principal itself is not income when repaid, which is precisely the advantage of the current account over a dividend route, but any interest forgiven or any balance waived can be reanalysed, so document waivers explicitly rather than letting them emerge from years of silence. Keep every withholding certificate the company issues, reconcile them with your foreign tax return, and never accept an arrangement where the company pays you gross interest with no French paperwork: an undocumented gross payment is the classic trigger for a later reassessment against the company, followed by an uncomfortable conversation between you and your own vehicle.

Currency and transfer mechanics complete the tax picture for a founder paid from abroad. Advances denominated in euros avoid the entire exchange-difference debate, since a loan booked in dollars or dirhams and repaid in euros generates gains or losses that both the company’s accounts and your personal position must explain. If the advance was genuinely funded in foreign currency, the agreement should state the reference exchange rate at disbursement and at repayment, and the wire proofs should show the conversion applied by the banks. French banks sometimes query large incoming shareholder wires under anti-money-laundering duties, so keep the source-of-funds evidence alongside the loan file: the foreign bank statement, the reason for the transfer, and the agreement cross-referenced by date. None of this is taxation in the strict sense, but every missing bank document is a future argument for a tax auditor or a hostile co-shareholder that the money was something other than a loan. A founder in London wiring pounds will find that a euro-denominated agreement, a clean conversion slip and a matching ledger entry close ninety percent of later questions before they are asked.

B. How to force repayment from abroad without moving back to France

When the amicable route stalls, French procedure offers a graduated ladder that a non-resident can climb entirely through counsel and paper, starting with the formal demand and ending, if needed, with seizure of the company’s assets. The first rung is the mise en demeure, the formal demand letter, which should identify the agreement, state the exact balance with interest computation, demand payment within a short stated deadline, usually eight to fifteen days, and warn of proceedings. Send it by registered letter with acknowledgement of receipt to the company’s siège social, the registered office, and by email to the manager for speed, keeping every slip. The demand matters three times over: it starts the limitation clock running cleanly, it triggers late-interest consequences under the agreement, and it proves to any later judge that the company refused a documented creditor rather than overlooking an informal request. From abroad, instruct a French lawyer to send it on professional letterhead; the cost is modest and the signal is unmistakable, because companies that ignored a shareholder’s emails very often answer counsel within the deadline.

The second rung is the injonction de payer, the order-for-payment procedure, which is tailor-made for an undisputed loan balance. Your lawyer files a short petition with the competent court, attaching the agreement, the wire proofs, the ledger extract and the unanswered demand, and the judge issues a payment order without a hearing if the file is convincing. The order is served on the company, which has one month to oppose it; without opposition, the order becomes enforceable and a commissaire de justice, the enforcement officer formerly called huissier, can seize the company’s bank balances or assets. With opposition, the case continues as an ordinary lawsuit, but you have lost nothing: the file is already built and the company has shown its hand. The whole sequence can be run by counsel with you signing a power of attorney abroad, and hearings you need not attend in routine cases. This route fits the shareholder current account particularly well because the claim is a fixed sum of money evidenced in writing, exactly what the procedure was designed for, and because companies that could have obtained a court grace period under Article 1343-5 must raise that request before the judge rather than simply ignoring the order.

The third rung is the ordinary lawsuit for payment, combined where useful with protective measures, and it is the right answer when the company disputes the nature of the advance or raises a blocking agreement you consider invalid. Before judgment, a judge can authorise a saisie conservatoire, a protective seizure that places a protective hold on a bank account or secures an asset while the merits are argued, provided your claim appears well-founded and recovery appears at risk; counsel requests it by petition, and the element of surprise is deliberate, so discuss timing carefully with your lawyer rather than announcing it in correspondence. On the merits, the court examines the agreement, the accounting recognition, the regulated-agreements report in a SAS, and any blocking convention the company invokes, then orders payment with interest and costs if your file holds. Enforcement follows through the commissaire de justice against any company asset in France, including the balance of its professional bank account, subject to the exemptions that protect minimum operating funds in enforcement law. Throughout, your physical absence changes almost nothing: powers of attorney, sworn statements, videoconference testimony where the court allows it, and counsel’s presence at hearings are the standard toolkit for non-resident litigants, used every week before French commercial courts.

Two strategic warnings close the enforcement discussion, and both bite harder from a distance. First, never let the dispute drift into the company’s insolvency without filing: once collective proceedings open, individual enforcement is frozen, your protective seizure may fall, and you join the queue of unsecured creditors declaring claims within the published deadline, recovering after preferential creditors and only if funds remain. If the BODACC, the official bulletin of civil and commercial announcements where insolvency openings are published, names your company, move within days, not months. Second, never confuse the company’s debt with the manager’s personal assets: the manager who refuses repayment does not automatically owe you personally, and seizing his home for a company debt will fail unless you establish a separate personal fault, such as misuse of corporate assets, through distinct proceedings. Aim enforcement at the company, keep the tone factual, and let each procedural step demonstrate that a documented creditor followed the rules while the debtor did not. Judges notice that contrast, and companies sense it coming, which is why most well-built current-account claims settle somewhere between the demand letter and the payment order, paid in one transfer or in court-ordered instalments, without anyone crossing a border.

Conclusion

Money you advance to your own French company is a loan, not a gift and not capital, and French law treats you as a creditor from the moment the agreement, the wire and the accounts align. Put that alignment in place before you need it: a written current account agreement with an explicit rate or an explicit zero, euro denomination, repayment terms you actually mean, and no blocking clause unless a bank financing genuinely requires one with a fixed end date. Police the company’s books from abroad by collecting the ledger extract and the regulated-agreements report each year, serve a formal demand the moment repayment matters, and act within the five-year limitation rather than letting balances sleep. Price the interest against the tax administration’s reference rate, confirm the capital is fully paid up so the deduction survives, and organise the withholding and treaty paperwork before the interest is paid rather than after. And when the company stalls, climb the enforcement ladder in order, demand letter, payment order, lawsuit with protective seizure if needed, while watching the insolvency bulletin so you never file into an empty room. Handled this way, the shareholder current account remains what it should be for a foreign founder: the most flexible funding tool in French company life, and a debt you can actually bring home.