You live in London, New York, Dubai or Singapore, and your French company has just hit the most common cash-flow wall in France: a French customer who received the goods or the service, who raised no complaint at the time, and who simply does not pay. The invoice is sixty days overdue, reminders by email go unanswered, and your accountant warns you that French late penalties exist but nobody applies them for you. Meanwhile the amounts sit in your receivables while salaries, social charges and VAT must still be paid on time. This guide explains, in English and in practical order, how a foreign-based founder turns an unpaid French invoice into money actually collected: documenting the claim and sending a formal notice that starts interest running, pricing the delay with the statutory penalties and the fixed recovery fee, choosing between the fast-track payment order and the interim provision hearing, and enforcing the resulting title through a French enforcement officer without flying to France. Every French acronym is explained, every decisive rule is quoted from its official text, and each step can be taken from abroad.
I. Make the unpaid invoice a documented claim that carries penalties from abroad
A. Send a formal notice that starts interest running and builds the file a judge will read
French judges decide on papers, and the creditor who arrives with a clean file wins faster and cheaper than the creditor who arrives with a story. Before any court step, assemble four items: the signed contract or accepted quotation, the delivery slips or acceptance reports proving the customer received what was invoiced, the invoice itself with its payment date, and every written reminder already sent. Where no written contract exists, purchase orders, order confirmations, email threads showing agreement on price and scope, and proof of performance can still establish the contractual cause of the claim, because the fast-track procedure described below expressly covers claims with a contractual cause. Keep originals and complete chains: a screenshot without its context persuades nobody, while a dated thread showing delivery, silence on quality, then excuses on payment tells the whole story at a glance.
The decisive document is the mise en demeure, the formal notice demanding payment. Under Article 1344 of the Civil Code, “Le débiteur est mis en demeure de payer soit par une sommation ou un acte portant interpellation suffisante, soit, si le contrat le prévoit, par la seule exigibilité de l’obligation.” In plain terms, either a bailiff-style summons or any act amounting to a clear demand puts the debtor on formal notice, unless the contract already provides that mere expiry of the due date is enough. From abroad, the practical equivalent is a registered letter with acknowledgment of receipt, known in France as a lettre recommandée avec accusé de réception, often shortened to RAR, sent to the debtor’s registered office as shown on its Kbis extract. The Kbis is the official identity card of a French company, issued by the greffe, the clerk’s office of the commercial court, and it gives the exact legal name and address you must use. Send the letter in French, state the invoice numbers, the principal amounts, the contractual due dates, the penalties and fees claimed, and a final deadline of eight to fifteen days before court action. Keep the postal receipt and the acknowledgment: French courts treat them as proof of both the demand and its date.
Do not let the debtor’s tactics reset your calendar. Three patterns return constantly: the customer who promises payment next month to buy time, the customer who suddenly discovers quality defects three months after silent acceptance, and the customer who asks for a credit note or a revised invoice, which quietly restarts the payment period. Answer each in writing within days. Accept a short, written payment schedule only against a first immediate instalment and an explicit acknowledgment of the full balance; contest late quality complaints by pointing to the dated acceptance and the months of silence; and never issue a credit note unless the underlying commercial reason is real and documented. Every exchange should assume a judge will read it one day, because if the case goes to court, a judge will. Founders who run their company through the vehicle comparison every foreign shareholder should know will recognise the logic: just as choosing between an SAS, an SARL, a branch and a subsidiary structures liability before problems arise, structuring the paper trail before suing determines how fast the court moves.
Two deadlines frame the whole strategy, and both run while you are abroad. Commercial claims between businesses are subject to a five-year limitation: under Article L.110-4 of the Commercial Code, “Les obligations nées à l’occasion de leur commerce entre commerçants ou entre commerçants et non-commerçants se prescrivent par cinq ans si elles ne sont pas soumises à des prescriptions spéciales plus courtes.” The general civil backstop says the same in broader terms: 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.” Five years looks generous until the claim ages: witnesses leave, email accounts close, the debtor restructures, and limitation disputes consume the hearing. The working rule is simple: formal notice within weeks of the missed due date, court filing within months if the notice fails, never years. A formal demand sent by registered letter also interrupts limitation and restarts it, which is one more reason to send it early and keep its proof.
B. Price the delay the French way: capped payment periods, automatic penalties and the forty-euro fee
Many foreign founders negotiate payment terms as if French law let the parties agree on anything. It does not. Article L.441-10 of the Commercial Code sets the architecture: failing special terms, payment is due thirty days after receipt of the goods or performance of the service, and the agreed period “ne peut dépasser soixante jours après la date d’émission de la facture”, with a possible forty-five days end-of-month formula only where expressly stipulated and not manifestly abusive toward the creditor. A clause granting ninety or one hundred and twenty days is not a tough negotiation outcome; it is an unlawful clause that a court will reduce to the statutory ceiling. Check every customer contract and every set of general terms now: if your terms promise ninety days, rewrite them before the next dispute, and if the debtor’s purchasing conditions impose one hundred and twenty days, know that the ceiling protects you regardless.
Once the due date shown on the invoice passes, the price of delay starts running automatically, and this is where French law is unusually creditor-friendly. As Article L.441-10 of the Commercial Code states, “Les pénalités de retard sont exigibles sans qu’un rappel soit nécessaire.” No reminder, no formal notice, no contractual clause is needed for late penalties to accrue: expiry of the date is enough. The default rate, unless the parties agreed otherwise within the legal floor, equals the interest rate applied by the European Central Bank to its most recent refinancing operation plus ten percentage points, and it can never be set below three times the statutory interest rate. In periods of elevated ECB rates this produces a penalty rate well above ten percent per year, which transforms every month of stalling into a measurable cost for the debtor. Your invoice must mention the applicable penalty rate and the recovery fee to let them run smoothly, so verify that your billing template contains both lines; if it does not, fix the template today, because the penalties on past invoices remain claimable but the paperwork is cleaner going forward.
On top of the penalties, every late-paying business debtor owes a fixed recovery fee. Article D.441-5 of the Commercial Code provides that “Le montant de l’indemnité forfaitaire pour frais de recouvrement prévue au II de l’article L. 441-10 est fixé à 40 euros.” Forty euros per overdue invoice, owed as of right, without justification. Where the actual recovery costs exceed that amount, the creditor may claim a supplementary indemnity with supporting documents, as Article L.441-10 expressly allows. And where the case reaches judgment, interest continues under the general civil rule: Article 1231-7 of the Civil Code states that “En toute matière, la condamnation à une indemnité emporte intérêts au taux légal même en l’absence de demande ou de disposition spéciale du jugement.” Quote these three layers, principal plus ECB-based penalties plus forty euros per invoice plus statutory interest after judgment, in the formal notice and in every filing: many debtors pay as soon as they see the meter running, and those who do not arrive before a judge who already knows the arithmetic.
A Paris and Île-de-France note belongs here because it changes the numbers in practice. Debtors headquartered in the Paris region often apply purchasing conditions with extended verification or acceptance procedures that quietly push the starting point of the payment period. Article L.441-10 caps those procedures too: acceptance or verification is measured against commercial good practice and cannot exceed thirty days from delivery or performance unless expressly agreed without abuse. If a Paris customer claims its internal goods-receipt process takes two months before the invoice clock starts, that process does not bind you beyond the statutory frame. The competent court for a Paris debtor will generally be the commercial court of Paris for business-to-business claims, the tribunal de commerce de Paris, or the judicial tribunal of Paris, the tribunal judiciaire de Paris, for mixed claims, and both apply the same ceilings. Mention the court by name in the formal notice: nothing concentrates a finance director’s mind like the exact forum where the payment order will be filed.
II. Get an enforceable title and collect it without flying to France
A. Win the title fast: the payment-order petition or the interim provision hearing
France offers creditors a procedure with almost no equivalent in common-law systems: the injonction de payer, the order-for-payment procedure, in which a judge grants an enforceable order on the creditor’s papers alone, without an initial hearing and without the debtor being heard. Article 1405 of the Code of Civil Procedure opens the door where “La créance a une cause contractuelle ou résulte d’une obligation de caractère statutaire et s’élève à un montant déterminé”, including contractual penalties, and also covers bills of exchange, promissory notes and assigned receivables. An unpaid invoice for delivered goods or performed services is the textbook case. The petition, the requête, is filed with the court of the debtor’s place of business: the commercial court for business debts, the judicial tribunal otherwise, using the official Cerfa form, the standardised administrative form numbered 12948*06 for payment-order petitions, with the contract, invoices, delivery proof and the formal notice attached. The official service-public guidance on debt recovery by payment order walks through the filing, the competent court and the forms, and it remains the most reliable public checklist before instructing counsel: debt recovery in France through the injonction de payer procedure.
The economics explain why this track comes first. Filing costs are modest, representation by a lawyer is not mandatory before the commercial court, and the judge rules within weeks in straightforward files. If the order is granted, it is served on the debtor by a commissaire de justice, the enforcement officer formerly called huissier de justice, and the debtor then has one month from service to file opposition, the opposition. The effect of that month is strict: Article 1422 of the Code of Civil Procedure provides that “Quelles que soient les modalités de la signification, le délai d’opposition prévu au premier alinéa de l’article 1416 est suspensif d’exécution.” During that month the order cannot be enforced, and an opposition filed in time sends the case to a full hearing where the order is replaced by a judgment. Founders sometimes read this as a weakness; it is in fact a filter. Debtors with no defence let the month expire, and the creditor then obtains the certificate of non-opposition from the greffe and holds an enforceable title. Debtors who oppose reveal their arguments early, in a forum where your documented file, formal notice and penalty computation already frame the debate. Either outcome moves the case forward, which is more than unanswered emails ever achieve.
The alternative fast track is the référé-provision, the interim hearing for an advance payment, and it suits larger claims or debtors likely to oppose a paper-only order. Under Article 835 of the Code of Civil Procedure, the president of the judicial tribunal may, “Dans les cas où l’existence de l’obligation n’est pas sérieusement contestable, ils peuvent accorder une provision au créancier, ou ordonner l’exécution de l’obligation même s’il s’agit d’une obligation de faire.” The president of the commercial court holds a parallel power for business disputes. The test is the absence of serious dispute: delivered goods, signed acceptance, unanswered invoices and a documented formal notice typically meet it, while genuine quality disputes supported by contemporaneous complaints may not. The hearing comes within weeks, both sides appear through counsel, and the resulting order grants a provisional sum, often most or all of the principal, immediately enforceable in most cases. Choose the payment order where the file is clean and the debtor is silent; choose the interim provision where the amount justifies a hearing, where the debtor already hired counsel, or where you want an enforceable order that survives opposition by design. Nothing prevents sequencing them intelligently: a failed paper-only attempt teaches the creditor exactly which points to armour at the hearing.
Where the debtor genuinely contests quality, quantity or authority to order, neither fast track guarantees success, and the case proceeds as an ordinary claim on the merits, the assignation au fond. This is the moment your early discipline pays compound interest. A writ that opens with dated delivery slips, silent months, then excuses, followed by the registered formal notice and the penalty computation, reads as a creditor’s file; a writ that opens with reconstructed memories reads as a dispute. Before the commercial court, proceedings are largely written, representation follows the court’s rules, and hearings can often be handled by local counsel while you join by video where permitted or simply stay informed through your lawyer’s reports. The founders who already lived through the mirror situation, a writ served on their own company while they were abroad, will find the machinery familiar: the same commercial-court timelines, the same extra deadlines for parties outside France, and the same need for counsel on the ground are described in what happens when a French company is served with a writ while its owner lives abroad. The lesson is symmetrical: distance is managed through procedure and representation, never by ignoring the calendar.
B. Enforce from abroad: the enforcement officer, bank seizure and the order of operations
A judgment or an unopposed payment order is not money; it is a titre exécutoire, an enforceable title, and converting it into money is a separate craft with its own professionals. The governing principle is stated in Article L.111-2 of the Code of Civil Procedures of Execution: “Le créancier muni d’un titre exécutoire constatant une créance liquide et exigible peut en poursuivre l’exécution forcée sur les biens de son débiteur dans les conditions propres à chaque mesure d’exécution.” Only an enforcement officer, the commissaire de justice, may carry out forced execution, and only within the procedural frame of each measure. Your counsel transmits the title to a commissaire de justice in the debtor’s area, who serves it with a command to pay, the commandement de payer, and then deploys the measures the file supports. From abroad you sign nothing in person: powers of attorney travel by email and post, funds recovered transit through the officer’s or counsel’s escrow, and reporting arrives in writing. The founder’s job is to choose the officer through counsel, fund the modest enforcement advances, and keep the claim’s paperwork available, not to attend.
The measure foreign creditors ask about first is the saisie-attribution, the seizure of bank balances, because it converts a title into frozen funds within days. Served on the debtor’s bank, it immediately freezes the balances shown on the accounts, up to the amount claimed plus costs, subject to protected minimums and exempted sums the officer verifies. Its effectiveness depends on knowing where the debtor banks, and this is where pre-litigation intelligence matters: bank details from prior transfers, RIB slips exchanged during the business relationship, and information lawfully gathered about the debtor’s establishments all help. Where bank attachment is uncertain, the saisie-vente on tangible assets, the attachment of receivables owed by the debtor’s own customers, or registration of a judicial mortgage as a protective measure each offer a second string. An experienced officer sequences them by cost and yield: bank seizure first where account intelligence exists, receivables attachment where the debtor is itself a supplier with known clients, tangible seizure where stock or equipment is visible, protective registrations where limitation or insolvency risk looms.
Two background risks must be monitored from the day the formal notice goes out, because both can empty the recovery. The first is the debtor’s insolvency: once safeguard, reorganisation or liquidation proceedings open, individual enforcement is frozen and the claim must be declared to the liabilities within the statutory deadline, the déclaration de créance, failing which it may be extinguished. Watch the BODACC, the Bulletin officiel des annonces civiles et commerciales, the official gazette where French insolvency openings are published, and instruct counsel to declare the claim at the first sign of proceedings; the penalties and fees computed under Part I join the declared principal as accessory claims. The second is the debtor who empties accounts between the title and the seizure. Speed is the answer: transmit the title to the officer the day it becomes enforceable, authorise the bank seizure immediately where account details exist, and consider protective measures while opposition periods or appeals run. First-instance decisions are now provisionally enforceable as of right, since Article 514 of the Code of Civil Procedure provides that “Les décisions de première instance sont de droit exécutoires à titre provisoire à moins que la loi ou la décision rendue n’en dispose autrement”, which means an appeal by the debtor no longer freezes collection by default. That single rule has changed the balance of power in French debt recovery: the creditor collects now and discusses later, rather than waiting years for a final decision while the debtor organises its insolvency.
Practical sequencing from abroad therefore looks like this. Week one: complete the file, verify the debtor’s exact legal identity and address on its Kbis, and send the registered formal notice with the penalty and fee computation. Weeks two to four: if silence or excuses follow, file the payment-order petition with the commercial court or the judicial tribunal of the debtor’s seat, through counsel, with the Cerfa form and every exhibit. Month three: serve the order, calendar the one-month opposition period with its suspensive effect, and prepare the hearing file in parallel so an opposition causes weeks of delay rather than months of panic. On expiry without opposition, collect the certificate of non-opposition and transmit the enforceable title to the commissaire de justice the same week; on opposition or genuine contest, pivot to the interim provision or the merits hearing with a file that already meets the absence-of-serious-dispute test. Throughout, diary the five-year limitation, watch the BODACC for insolvency publications, and keep every deadline in a shared calendar with counsel so that distance never becomes delay. Done in this order, an unpaid French invoice stops being a sunk cost of doing business in France and becomes what the Code intended: a contractual claim with automatic penalties, fast judicial tracks, and enforcement officers whose daily work is turning titles into transfers.
Conclusion
A French customer who does not pay is not a fatality of the French market; it is a procedure waiting to be run. Put the claim in writing early with a registered formal notice that satisfies Article 1344, price the delay with the sixty-day ceiling, the automatic ECB-based penalties, the forty-euro fee per invoice and the statutory interest the Code attaches to every award, then choose the fast track the file supports: the paper-only payment order of Article 1405 where the debt is silent and documented, the interim provision of Article 835 where a hearing will concentrate minds or pre-empt opposition. Serve, calendar the suspensive opposition month, and hand the enforceable title to a commissaire de justice who seizes bank balances and receivables under Article L.111-2 while first-instance enforceability under Article 514 keeps the appeal from freezing collection. Watch limitation and the BODACC throughout, because procedure rewards the creditor who moves early. Run from abroad through counsel and the enforcement officer, the whole chain from notice to seized funds needs no flight, no office and no confrontation: only papers in order, deadlines kept, and penalties that make waiting more expensive for the debtor than paying.