You wired 50,000 euros from London, New York or Dubai to keep your French company alive. The Paris office rent was due, the first employee had to be paid, and your French partner told you that a quick shareholder advance was the simplest fix. You transferred the money from your personal account, sometimes with a one-line email as the only paperwork, and you told yourself you would take it back once the cash flow recovered. Months later the company is still trading and pays its other suppliers, yet every request for repayment meets the same wall: there is no cash, the funds must stay in the company, or a vote you never attended supposedly froze your advance. Living abroad, you wonder whether French law leaves you powerless and whether the money is lost.
It is not lost, but the worst reflex is to do nothing while the file goes stale. In France the money a shareholder leaves at the disposal of the company sits in a compte courant d’associé, literally a shareholder current account, and the courts treat it as a loan that the company must repay. When repayment is impossible in practice, two other exits exist: converting the loan into shares of your French société par actions simplifiée (SAS, the flexible joint-stock company most foreign founders choose) or formally writing the claim off. Each exit carries its own paperwork, its own vote, and its own tax bill, and the wrong order can cost you interest, deductibility, or the claim itself. This article maps the three exits as a decision tree for a founder who lives abroad: what your advance legally is, when the company can lawfully make you wait, how to force payment from another country with interest, and how to convert or abandon the claim without creating a tax shock. Readers who are still setting up their structure should start with our founding guide to bank account, Kbis company ID, VAT and first hire in France, which explains the registration chain this article builds on.
I. Your advance is a loan the SAS must repay, even when the managers plead empty coffers
A. Why your wire transfers count as a repayable shareholder loan under French law
French law starts from a simple definition. Article 1892 of the Civil Code provides that “Le prêt de consommation est un contrat par lequel l’une des parties livre à l’autre une certaine quantité de choses qui se consomment par l’usage, à la charge par cette dernière de lui en rendre autant de même espèce et qualité.” Money is the classic consumable thing, and article 1902 of the same Code adds that “L’emprunteur est tenu de rendre les choses prêtées, en même quantité et qualité, et au terme convenu.” Your transfers from abroad fit that frame exactly: you delivered euros, the SAS used them, and the company owes you the same amount back. No particular form is required for the loan to exist, which is why even undocumented advances can qualify, although proving them without paperwork is harder, as explained below.
The banking monopoly does not stand in your way either. French law forbids most people from lending on a regular basis, since article L. 511-5 of the Monetary and Financial Code states 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.” Shareholder advances are expressly carved out of the parallel ban on taking repayable funds from the public: article L. 312-2 of the same Code first recalls that “Sont considérés comme fonds remboursables du public les fonds qu’une personne recueille d’un tiers, notamment sous la forme de dépôts, avec le droit d’en disposer pour son propre compte mais à charge pour elle de les restituer”, then states that “Toutefois, ne sont pas considérés comme fonds remboursables du public : 1. Les fonds reçus ou laissés en compte par les associés en nom ou les commanditaires d’une société de personnes, les associés ou actionnaires, les administrateurs, les membres du directoire et du conseil de surveillance, les directeurs généraux et directeurs généraux délégués, les présidents de sociétés par actions simplifiées ou les gérants ainsi que les fonds provenant de prêts participatifs”. In plain English, a SAS may lawfully receive and owe money to its own shareholders and president without holding a banking licence, and your position as a foreign shareholder changes nothing about that analysis.
What matters far more than your residence is your paper trail, because the SAS will rarely deny receiving the money but will often dispute the amount, the interest, or the repayment date. Build the file before any confrontation. Collect every international transfer slip showing the debit of your personal account and the credit of the company account, with dates, amounts, and currency conversion details where the wire was sent in pounds or dollars. Keep the emails and messages in which you or the president described the payments as advances, loans, or comptes courants, and download the company bank statements that mirror them. Ask the chartered accountant (expert-comptable) for the shareholder current-account ledger and the annual financial statements in which your credit balance appears, since an account signed off year after year is difficult for the company to disown later. If the statutes (statuts) or a separate shareholder loan agreement set an interest rate, a term, or a notice period, keep the signed version; if nothing was ever signed, say so frankly in your demand letter rather than letting the company discover the gap first. One related-party formality deserves attention in a SAS: 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.” A loan from a significant shareholder is exactly such an agreement, so check whether the report was presented and voted on; a missing report does not cancel your claim, but it weakens the company’s posture and strengthens any later challenge to decisions taken without informing the shareholders.
Two points comfort foreign founders specifically. First, you do not need a French personal bank account, a French tax domicile, or a French company mandate to hold this claim: the creditor is you as a person, wherever you live, and payment can be ordered to your foreign account. Second, the Kbis extract (the official company ID card issued by the greffe, the registry of the commercial court) and the entry in the Registre du commerce et des sociétés (RCS, the trade and companies register) identify your debtor with certainty, so order a recent Kbis before writing: it confirms the exact corporate name, the SIREN number, the registered office, and the identity of the president you are addressing. Transfer slips plus ledger plus Kbis make a file that a French court can read in minutes, which is precisely what summary judges look for.
B. When the SAS can lawfully make you wait, and when its excuses fail in court
The company’s strongest defence is a text you signed, not its bank balance. Repayment can be postponed only by a clause in the statutes, a shareholder agreement (pacte d’associés), or a loan agreement that sets a fixed term, a notice period, or an express lock-up (blocage) of the current account. French judges state the mirror principle bluntly: a shareholder gets the money back at any time unless such a clause says otherwise. The Nancy judicial court recorded the rule in September 2025 in a shareholder-account dispute, noting that “il est de jurisprudence constante qu’à défaut de clause statutaire ou de disposition conventionnelle contraire, elle est en droit de demander, en qualité d’associée, le remboursement des sommes avancées à tout moment” (TJ Nancy, 16 September 2025, RG 25/00688). Before spending on proceedings, reread everything you signed at incorporation and during later fundraisings: a three-year blocking clause initialled in a hurry is enforceable, while a vague statement in a meeting that funds “should stay as long as needed” is generally not. If a blocking clause exists, diary its expiry date, because the claim becomes callable the day after, and any conversion or waiver discussed below must respect that timetable.
Short of such a clause, lack of cash is an explanation, not a legal defence. Courts order repayment of due shareholder advances even when the company pleads strained finances, and disputes about the exact balance go to evidence, not to dismissal. In July 2026 the Vienne commercial court, ruling in summary proceedings on a shareholder advance, restated that “Attendu que de jurisprudence constante un associé peut demander le remboursement de son compte courant d’associé à tout moment” (Tribunal de commerce de Vienne, order of 23 July 2026, rôle 2026R10), then examined each of the company’s objections to the amount claimed instead of treating the request as illegitimate. The lesson for a founder abroad is practical: expect the SAS to answer that the accountant has not finalised the balance, that some expenses you paid directly must be netted off, or that part of the advance was really a gift. Each objection must be met with documents, which is why the ledger, the transfer slips, and the approved accounts from Part I matter more than any argument about fairness. A company that simply answers “we cannot pay” without pointing to a contractual term loses the legal point; it may still gain time in practice, which is why the enforcement tools in Part II exist.
One timing trap is far more dangerous than a slow payer: the suspect period (période suspecte) if the SAS later enters insolvency. Article L. 632-2 of the Commercial Code warns that “Les paiements pour dettes échues effectués à compter de la date de cessation des paiements et les actes à titre onéreux accomplis à compter de cette même date peuvent être annulés si ceux qui ont traité avec le débiteur ont eu connaissance de la cessation des paiements.” In December 2025 the Nîmes Court of Appeal applied exactly that logic, recalling that “Aux termes de l’article L.632-2 alinéa 1 du code de commerce, rendu applicable à la liquidation judiciaire par l’article L. 641-14, alinéa 1er, du même code, les paiements pour dettes échues effectués à compter de la date de cessation des paiements et les actes à titre onéreux accomplis à compter de cette même date peuvent être annulés si ceux qui ont traité avec le débiteur ont eu connaissance de la cessation des paiements” (CA Nîmes, 19 December 2025, RG 25/00678), and stressing that “L’annulation d’un paiement pour dette échue ou d’un acte onéreux accompli en période suspecte n’exige pas la preuve de la mauvaise foi de ceux qui ont traité avec le débiteur, ni de l’existence d’un préjudice, mais seulement la connaissance de la cessation des paiements”. A shareholder who is also president, or who receives detailed management information, is presumed to know the company’s true state, so pushing through a full repayment when the SAS is already unable to meet its due liabilities with its available assets can see the payment clawed back by the insolvency practitioner. The safe sequence is therefore to demand payment early, while the company is merely difficult rather than insolvent, and to treat rumours of missed payroll, unpaid URSSAF social-security bills (the body collecting employer and employee social contributions), or suppliers filing claims as a signal to act within weeks, not months.
Time also runs against the passive creditor through limitation. 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.” For a callable advance, the clock normally starts when you demand repayment or when the agreed term expires, but each case turns on its documents, and a written acknowledgement of the debt (reconnaissance de dette) or a partial payment restarts useful time. From abroad, the cheapest insurance is a registered demand letter that states the exact balance claimed and asks for payment within a short deadline: it fixes the starting point, interrupts limitation, and opens the enforcement ladder. Keep every proof of sending and receipt, because a letter that cannot be shown to have arrived is worth little. Founders whose SAS is registered in Paris or the surrounding Île-de-France region should note that their debtor’s Kbis points to the Paris commercial registry and, in case of litigation, to the Paris commercial courts, whose judges handle shareholder-account disputes weekly; local counsel can file and plead while you follow the hearing by arrangement, but the limitation clock does not pause while you look for counsel.
II. Three exits from abroad: force payment with interest, convert the loan into shares, or write it off cleanly
A. Force payment from another country and make the interest count
Start with a formal demand before any court step, drafted from abroad but served to be provable in France. The letter should name the SAS exactly as on the Kbis, state the balance of your current account with the supporting ledger, recall that no blocking clause prevents repayment or that the agreed term has expired, set a payment deadline of fifteen to thirty days to your foreign account with full wire details, and warn that interest runs from the demand. Send it by international registered mail with acknowledgement of receipt and by email to the president in parallel, and keep both receipts; if the president ignores everything, service through a French commissaire de justice (the enforcement officer, formerly huissier de justice) can follow, including service abroad under the applicable international rules. A calm, numbered, documented letter often unlocks payment precisely because the next steps are fast and inexpensive for the creditor.
If the deadline passes, French procedure offers two express lanes that do not require you to fly in. The first is the order-to-pay procedure (injonction de payer): article 1405 of the Code of Civil Procedure opens that “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”. A shareholder loan documented by transfers and a ledger is a contractual claim for a fixed sum, so your lawyer files a petition with the evidence, the judge issues a payment order without a hearing, and the order is served on the company, which has one month to oppose; without opposition, the order becomes enforceable and the bailiff can seize the SAS bank balances. The second lane is summary proceedings for a provisional award (référé-provision): article 835 of the same Code provides that “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 Vienne order cited above shows the mechanism working on exactly this kind of claim, with the summary judge checking the balance line by line. Choose the order-to-pay route for a clean, documented balance, and the summary route when the company raises noisy but thin objections that a judge should test at a hearing; your lawyer can attend while you join by arrangement where the court allows it.
Interest is where foreign founders regularly leave money on the table, in both directions. If your loan agreement provides a rate, it applies within the limits below; if nothing was agreed, the claim still bears statutory interest from the formal demand, so the demand letter has direct monetary value. Where interest is agreed, two tax ceilings frame the negotiation. On the company side, article 39 of the General Tax Code (CGI, Code général des impôts) allows only “Les intérêts servis aux associés à raison des sommes qu’ils laissent ou mettent à la disposition de la société, en sus de leur part du capital, quelle que soit la forme de la société, dans la limite de ceux calculés à un taux égal à la moyenne annuelle des taux effectifs moyens pratiqués par les établissements de crédit et les sociétés de financement pour des prêts à taux variable aux entreprises, d’une durée initiale supérieure à deux ans.” In practice that means interest above the average rate published quarterly for variable-rate business loans is not deductible for the SAS, and the same article adds a second lock: “Cette déduction est subordonnée à la condition que le capital ait été entièrement libéré.” If you subscribed 10,000 euros of shares but only paid up 7,000, the SAS cannot deduct any of your interest until the capital is fully paid up, a frequent surprise in founder-financed companies. Work the example before negotiating: on a 50,000 euro advance bearing 4% while the published average stands at 3%, the SAS deducts only the 3% slice and pays corporate tax on the rest, so agreeing a rate near the published average usually beats an ambitious contractual rate that evaporates at tax time. Where the lender is your own foreign company rather than you personally, a parallel cap applies since article 212 of the same Code states that “Les intérêts afférents aux sommes laissées ou mises à disposition d’une entreprise par une entreprise qui est son associée ou par une entreprise liée, directement ou indirectement, au sens du 12 de l’article 39, sont déductibles :” only within statutory limits, so intra-group advances need documented arm’s-length paperwork, not a handshake.
On your side as an individual lender, interest received from a French company is investment income taxed in France, with the flat-rate levy (prélèvement forfaitaire unique, PFU) as the default mechanism: article 200 A of the General Tax Code fixes that “Le taux forfaitaire mentionné au premier alinéa du présent 1 est fixé à 12,8 %”, to which French social levies are added for residents, while non-residents face withholding whose rate and relief depend on the tax treaty between France and their country of residence. Two consequences follow for someone living in London, New York, or Dubai. First, ask the SAS to apply the correct levy and to give you the annual tax slip (imprimé fiscal unique) showing interest paid and tax withheld, because your home-country return will need it to claim any treaty credit. Second, compare the after-tax yield of chasing two years of interest against the conversion and waiver exits below: interest that is non-deductible for the company but fully taxable for you is value destroyed on both sides, and a lower agreed rate that the SAS can actually deduct sometimes puts more cash in your pocket than a higher rate that triggers a tax adjustment.
B. Convert the claim into shares or abandon it, without creating a second bill
When the SAS genuinely cannot pay, converting your current account into share capital (incorporation de créance en capital) turns a doubtful debt into equity: you subscribe to a capital increase and pay for your new shares by setting off your loan against the subscription price, instead of wiring fresh cash. The civil mechanism is set-off (compensation), and article 1347 of the Civil Code defines it as follows: “La compensation est l’extinction simultanée d’obligations réciproques entre deux personnes.” For that mutual extinction to work, article 1347-1 of the same Code requires that “la compensation n’a lieu qu’entre deux obligations fongibles, certaines, liquides et exigibles”, adding that “Sont fongibles les obligations de somme d’argent”. Translated to your file, three conditions must hold on the day of the vote: your loan balance must be certain in amount, liquid meaning precisely quantified, and due, meaning no blocking clause still suspends it. A disputed, unquantified, or still-locked balance cannot be converted, which is why the ledger work in Part I comes first and why any blocking clause must have expired or be lifted by unanimous agreement before the operation.
The procedure runs in a fixed order that a founder abroad can steer remotely with counsel. First, the president closes an interim statement of account (arrêté des comptes de créances) showing your exact credit balance, and the statutory auditor (commissaire aux comptes) certifies that the claim is certain, liquid, and due where one is appointed; companies without an auditor have the figures verified through the appointed professional and the shareholder vote, so ask counsel which verification your SAS needs before convening anyone. Second, the shareholders vote the capital increase by set-off and the matching amendment of the statutes, with your own vote counted according to the SAS rules on related-party decisions; co-shareholders should receive the auditor certificate and the draft amended statutes in advance, because a conversion that dilutes a partner who learns the numbers at the meeting breeds the next dispute. Third, the formalities follow: filing with the one-stop business counter (guichet unique), registration by the greffe, update of the Kbis, and publication in the BODACC (the official bulletin of civil and commercial announcements) where required, after which your new shares exist against the world. Each step can be prepared by email and signed remotely: videoconference votes and written consultations are valid where the statutes allow them, powers of attorney cover a shareholder who cannot connect, and a private deed signed abroad is legalised for French filing with an apostille where the Hague Convention applies to your country. Price the conversion honestly by agreeing the share value in the vote; converting a 50,000 euro claim into shares priced far below their real value shifts wealth from your partners to you and invites a later challenge, while a fair price documented in the minutes protects everyone.
The mirror exit is the formal waiver (abandon de compte courant): you forgive all or part of the debt by a signed deed, the SAS books an exceptional gain, and the cash pressure disappears. Founders reach for this deed when the company must show clean equity to a bank or when a buyer conditions the deal on a balance sheet with no shareholder debt, and a partial waiver combined with a partial conversion often reads better than either extreme. Draft the deed as carefully as a contract: identify the exact balance waived with the ledger date, state whether the waiver is final or conditional on future profits (the so-called return-to-better-fortunes clause, clause de retour à meilleure fortune, which revives the debt if the company recovers), and keep a copy with the company accounts. The tax treatment of the waiver depends on its documented motive, and an undocumented waiver risks being read as a gift or a hidden distribution, so the deed should state the business reason in plain words and the company should book it through the accountant rather than through a quiet journal entry. Where the SAS is already near insolvency, neither conversion nor waiver should be signed without same-week advice, because both can be re-examined in a later proceeding, and the L. 632-2 warning from Part I applies to advantages given with knowledge of the cash crisis.
For Paris and Île-de-France companies, add two practical lines to the plan. Filings land at the Paris commercial registry, whose processing rhythm sets the date your Kbis shows the new capital; schedule the bank, the lease, and any subsidy file around that date rather than the vote date, since counterparties read the Kbis, not the minutes. And if enforcement becomes necessary, the competent Paris commercial court hears these files constantly, so a well-indexed bundle with transfers, ledger, Kbis, and demand letter is examined faster than a narrative file. Whichever exit you choose, sequence the moves: demand first to stop limitation and start interest, negotiate conversion while the demand clock runs, and keep the waiver as the documented last resort rather than the opening concession. A founder who follows that order from abroad arrives at every meeting, including a court hearing, as the organised creditor in the file.
Conclusion
Your shareholder advance is a loan, not a gift to the company: the Civil Code orders the borrower to return what was lent, the Monetary and Financial Code shelters shareholder funds from the banking monopoly, and recent courts from Vienne to Nancy repeat that a shareholder calls the money back at any time unless a signed clause says otherwise. The company’s empty coffers explain the delay but do not erase the debt, while the suspect-period cases from Nîmes draw the red line you must not cross once insolvency looms. From that base, choose your exit with the tax math in hand: enforce payment through a provable demand, an order-to-pay petition, or a summary provision with interest capped near the published average rate and taxed at the flat levy; convert the claim into shares by certified set-off when the company is viable but illiquid; or waive it by a reasoned deed when a clean balance sheet is worth more than a doubtful debt. Foreign residence complicates logistics, never rights: paper, votes, and filings can all be handled remotely once the file is complete. Start today by pulling the Kbis, the ledger, and the transfer slips, because every exit in this article rewards the creditor whose balance is certain, quantified, and due.