You have decided to create a company in France while living abroad, the statutes are almost ready, and one practical question now blocks everything: how do you actually pay the share capital into a company that does not legally exist yet, from a bank account in another country, without the money getting stuck? French law answers with a ritual that surprises many foreign founders. Cash contributions must be deposited with an authorised holder within eight days of receipt, frozen there until the company is registered, and released only against proof of registration. The depositary then issues the blocked-funds certificate that the business formalities portal requires before the company can be entered on the trade register. Founders who treat this step as a simple transfer often discover weeks of delay: a transfer without the right reference, a deposit made with the wrong holder, or a certificate that the registry rejects. This guide explains the deposit from abroad step by step, the release of the funds after registration, the six-month safety net if registration fails, and the five-year clock that keeps running afterwards on any capital left unpaid. It is written for non-resident founders of a SAS (société par actions simplifiée, the flexible joint-stock company most foreigners choose) or a SARL (société à responsabilité limitée, the limited liability company), and every French acronym is explained on first use.

I. Paying the capital in from abroad: the blocked-funds deposit and the eight-day rule

A. How much cash to release now, and where the money must sit

French law does not require you to pay the full cash capital on day one, but it fixes a minimum that must be released at subscription, and the minimum depends on the company form. In a SAS, the rule comes from the provisions on the SA (société anonyme, the public limited company) applied through the SAS chapter: “Les actions de numéraire sont libérées, lors de la souscription, de la moitié au moins de leur valeur nominale”, and “La libération du surplus intervient en une ou plusieurs fois sur décision du conseil d’administration ou du directoire selon le cas, dans un délai qui ne peut excéder cinq ans à compter de l’immatriculation de la société au registre du commerce et des sociétés” (Article L225-3 of the Commercial Code). The bridge that makes SA rules apply to the SAS sits in Article L227-1 of the Commercial Code, which is why your SAS with 10,000 euros of cash capital requires at least 5,000 euros released at the start. In a SARL the entry ticket is lower: “Les parts représentant des apports en numéraire doivent être libérées d’au moins un cinquième de leur montant”, with the balance payable on the manager’s decision within five years of registration (Article L223-7 of the Commercial Code). Contributions in kind, such as equipment or a business asset, follow a stricter rule in both forms: they must be fully transferred at once, since shares or stock representing in-kind contributions are “intégralement libérées” from issue. Understanding which fraction is due immediately matters because the depositary will only certify what has actually been received, and the registry compares the certificate with the statutes.

Once the amount is fixed, the money must be placed with one of the three authorised holders, and the list is closed. For a SARL, “Dans les huit jours de leur réception, les fonds provenant de la libération des parts sociales sont déposés pour le compte de la société en formation et par les personnes qui les ont reçus à la Caisse des dépôts et consignations, chez un notaire ou dans un établissement de crédit” (Article R223-3 of the Commercial Code). The Caisse des dépôts et consignations, usually shortened to CDC, is the French public financial institution that acts as a safe holder; the notaire is the French public-officer lawyer who authenticates deeds; the établissement de crédit is simply a licensed bank. For a SAS, formed as a company with shares, the parallel text provides that “Les fonds provenant des souscriptions en numéraire et la liste des souscripteurs avec l’indication des sommes versées par chacun d’eux font l’objet d’un dépôt dans les conditions déterminées par décret en Conseil d’Etat, celui-ci fixe également les conditions dans lesquelles est ouvert le droit à communication de cette liste.”, and it adds a custody rule every foreign founder should know: “A l’exception des dépositaires visés par le décret prévu à l’alinéa précédent, nul ne peut détenir plus de huit jours les sommes recueillies pour le compte d’une société en formation” (Article L225-5 of the Commercial Code). In plain terms, whoever collects the subscriptions, typically the founder or the future manager, must forward them to an authorised holder within eight days and may not sit on the cash. The statutes must record both the release of the shares and the deposit of the funds, so the drafter needs the depositary’s details before finalising the text.

From abroad, the friction is practical rather than legal, and anticipating it saves weeks. First, open the blocked account early: French banks perform anti-money-laundering checks on non-resident shareholders and often ask for a passport, proof of address, the draft statutes, and evidence of the origin of the funds, so start this step before signing anything. Second, instruct the transfer so that it is traceable to the subscription: the wire should be sent by the subscriber, in the exact name that appears in the draft statutes and the subscriber list, with a reference such as subscription to the capital of the company in formation, adapted with its exact draft name, because a transfer arriving from an unrelated third-party account or under a different spelling invites questions from both the bank and the registry. Third, manage the currency: capital stated in euros and funded from a dollar, pound, or dirham account must arrive for the exact euro amount subscribed, so agree with the bank on who bears the conversion spread and keep the credit advice showing the euro amount received, since the certificate states what the depositary received, not what you sent. Fourth, collect the subscriber list carefully: for a SAS the deposit covers both the funds and the subscriber list showing the amount paid by each subscriber, meaning each subscriber’s identity and amount must match the statutes to the euro. Founders who cannot open a French bank account quickly, a frequent situation for non-residents, often use the notaire or the CDC route instead, which avoids negotiating a corporate account before the company exists. If your project also involves the wider incorporation sequence, from the bank account to the Kbis certificate, the VAT number, and the first hire, our general guide for foreign founders describes the full chain in which this deposit is only one link (Setting Up a Company in France as a Foreign Founder: Bank Account, Kbis, VAT and Your First Hire).

The certificate issued by the depositary is the document that unlocks registration. Company creation in France now runs through a single online portal, the guichet unique, operated for formalities on behalf of the registries: “Ce dossier est déposé par voie électronique auprès d’un organisme unique désigné à cet effet. Ce dépôt vaut déclaration auprès du destinataire dès lors que le dossier est régulier et complet à l’égard de celui-ci” (Article L123-33 of the Commercial Code). The filing must be regular and complete, and an attestation de dépôt des fonds that misstates a name, an amount, or the company name makes it incomplete. For a Paris registration, the competent registry is the greffe of the Paris court for commercial matters, the greffe being the registry office of the court that keeps the RCS, the registre du commerce et des sociétés, which is the French trade and companies register. The Kbis, the official identity certificate of the company drawn from the RCS, is issued only after registration, which is why the funds stay frozen in the meantime. Treat the certificate as a registry document, not a bank receipt: check every accent, company name, amount, and subscriber name before the lawyer or formalist uploads it, because correcting a filed dossier from another time zone costs far more time than proofreading it.

B. Getting the money back out: release after registration and the six-month safety net

The capital is blocked for a reason that follows from a basic principle of French company law: the company becomes a legal person only when it is registered. “Les sociétés commerciales jouissent de la personnalité morale à dater de leur immatriculation au registre du commerce et des sociétés”, and anyone who acted for the company in formation stays personally liable unless the registered company takes over the commitments, which are then deemed made by the company from the start (Article L210-6 of the Commercial Code). Because the subscriber’s money was paid to a company that did not yet exist as a person, only the registered company’s representative may withdraw it. For a SARL the text is explicit: “Le retrait des fonds provenant de la libération des parts sociales ne peut être effectué par le mandataire de la société, avant l’immatriculation de celle-ci au registre du commerce et des sociétés” (Article L223-8 of the Commercial Code). For a company with shares such as the SAS, the mirror rule states that “Le retrait des fonds provenant des souscriptions en numéraire ne peut être effectué par le mandataire de la société avant l’immatriculation de celle-ci au registre du commerce et des sociétés” (Article L225-11 of the Commercial Code). In practice, the manager or president walks into the depositary with the Kbis proving registration and the authority to act, and the funds move to the company’s new operating account. Founders living abroad should therefore plan two banking steps, not one: the blocked deposit first, then the operating account that receives the released funds, and a power of attorney if the manager cannot attend the release in person.

The harder question is what happens when registration never comes. Projects stall: a lease falls through, co-founders disagree, the registry raises an objection that cannot be fixed, or the founder simply changes plans. French law does not leave subscribers trapped indefinitely. It organises a six-month safety net counted from the first deposit of funds. For a SARL, “Si la société n’est pas constituée dans le délai de six mois à compter du premier dépôt de fonds, ou si elle n’est pas immatriculée au registre du commerce et des sociétés dans le même délai, les apporteurs peuvent individuellement demander en justice l’autorisation de retirer le montant de leurs apports”, and where one representative acts for all contributors, that representative “peut demander directement au dépositaire le retrait des fonds” (Article L223-8 of the Commercial Code). For a SAS, any subscriber may ask a court to appoint a representative tasked with withdrawing the funds and returning them to subscribers less distribution costs, and the same withdrawal can be requested directly from the depositary under the same conditions (Article L225-11 of the Commercial Code). Three points matter for a founder abroad. First, the clock runs from the first deposit, so keep the depositary’s dated receipt as the starting point. Second, the remedy is individual: each subscriber can act alone through a court application, which protects a foreign minority subscriber if local partners go silent. Third, the procedure is judicial, not automatic: the depositary does not return the money on a simple email, and budgeting for a French court application from abroad, including a local lawyer and translations, belongs in the risk assessment of any fragile project.

If the project revives after a withdrawal, the law requires a fresh start on the deposit. The SARL text closes the loop: “Si les apporteurs décident ultérieurement de constituer la société, il doit être procédé à nouveau au dépôt des fonds” (Article L223-8 of the Commercial Code). You cannot recycle the old certificate for a new filing months later; the registry wants a deposit that matches the statutes submitted now. Two related traps catch foreign founders at this stage. The first is spending the blocked money early: pre-registration expenses such as a market study or travel are real costs, but they cannot be paid from the frozen deposit, because no withdrawal is possible before registration. The proper route is for a founder to pay personally, keep invoices, list the acts in an annex to the statutes or a takeover decision, and let the registered company take them over under the mechanism described in Article L210-6, so they become company expenses from the start. The second trap is forgetting that acts signed before registration bind the signatory personally until takeover. A founder who signs a Paris office lease “for the company in formation” and never registers remains personally bound, which is a far larger risk than the few thousand euros sleeping at the depositary. The deposit is therefore only one piece of the pre-registration discipline: block the capital, sign carefully, register fast, then release and take over.

II. Living with capital that is only partly paid: calls for funds and later increases

A. The five-year deadline, automatic interest, and who can force payment

Paying the minimum at subscription leaves a balance owed to the company, and French law treats that balance as a genuine debt with a hard outer deadline. In a SARL, “La libération du surplus intervient en une ou plusieurs fois sur décision du gérant, dans un délai qui ne peut excéder cinq ans à compter de l’immatriculation de la société au registre du commerce et des sociétés” (Article L223-7 of the Commercial Code). In a SAS, the surplus is called by the board or the management body within five years of registration under Article L225-3. The five years run from registration, the immatriculation shown on the Kbis, not from the signature of the statutes or the deposit, and a founder who subscribed in October 2026 with registration in November 2026 must be fully paid by November 2031. Civil law adds the general principle behind these texts: “Chaque associé est débiteur envers la société de tout ce qu’il a promis de lui apporter en nature, en numéraire ou en industrie” (Article 1843-3 of the Civil Code). The unpaid subscriber is not a free rider waiting comfortably; the subscriber is a debtor of the company, and the debt follows the subscriber even if the shares are later discussed in a dispute between founders.

That debt carries two consequences that foreign shareholders often underestimate. First, late payment bears interest automatically: “L’associé qui devait apporter une somme dans la société et qui ne l’a point fait devient de plein droit et sans demande, débiteur des intérêts de cette somme à compter du jour où elle devait être payée et ce sans préjudice de plus amples dommages-intérêts, s’il y a lieu” (Article 1843-3 of the Civil Code). No reminder is needed; interest runs from the due date fixed by the call for funds, and damages can be added. Second, anyone with an interest can force the call itself through the courts: “lorsqu’il n’a pas été procédé dans un délai légal aux appels de fonds pour réaliser la libération intégrale du capital, tout intéressé peut demander au président du tribunal statuant en référé soit d’enjoindre sous astreinte aux administrateurs, gérants et dirigeants de procéder à ces appels de fonds, soit de désigner un mandataire chargé de procéder à cette formalité” (Article 1843-3 of the Civil Code). A co-founder, a creditor, or a new investor can therefore ask the emergency judge to order the managers to call the unpaid capital under penalty, or to appoint an agent to do it. For a founder living abroad, the lesson is concrete: ignoring a call for funds because the letter arrived at an old address or in French does not pause anything, and designating a reliable contact for company mail in France is as important as the shareholding itself.

A recent appeal decision shows how courts apply the five-year rule when shareholders argue that dormancy or delay changed the position. The company Hexocap, a SAS formed in January 2011, sued two shareholders for payment of the unpaid balance after the five-year period had expired, and the shareholders pleaded limitation. The Lyon Court of Appeal confirmed that the claim was admissible, holding that “la libération du capital demeurait possible dans un délai de 5 ans à compter de la constitution de la société soit au plus tard le 13 janvier 2016, sans qu’il soit besoin qu’une demande particulière soit formée par l’appelante auprès de M. [G] et M. [F], s’agissant d’une simple application de la loi” (Court of Appeal of Lyon, 3rd chamber A, 13 February 2025, no. 20/00041, full decision on courdecassation.fr). The court added that “la prescription de l’action aux fins de paiement du solde du capital débutait à compter du 13 janvier 2016”, and concluded that “aucune prescription ne saurait être retenue au titre de l’action en paiement aux fins de libération de la totalité du capital de la société Hexocap”. Three lessons follow for a foreign shareholder. No personal demand during the five years was needed for the debt to become due; expiry of the period itself made the balance payable. The limitation clock for the payment action started at expiry, not at subscription, and the 2018 writ was therefore in time. And putting the company to sleep, the mise en sommeil the shareholders had voted, did not dissolve the company or erase the statutes, so the debt survived. A dormant French company owned from abroad is not a frozen file; its unpaid capital keeps its legal life.

One more lock completes the picture: as long as the capital is not fully paid, the company cannot raise fresh cash from its members. In a SARL, “le capital social doit être intégralement libéré avant toute souscription de nouvelles parts sociales à libérer en numéraire, à peine de nullité de l’opération” (Article L223-7 of the Commercial Code). A cash increase launched while old shares remain partly paid is void, not merely irregular, which means a foreign founder who needs new money urgently must first settle the old balance. Practically, keep a one-page capital diary from registration: amount subscribed by each partner, amount released and date, depositary and certificate reference, registration date starting the five-year period, each call for funds with its due date, and the final deadline. Store it with the Kbis and the statutes where your French contact can find it, because five years is long enough to forget and short enough to hurt.

B. Topping up or increasing the capital later: a procedure, not a wire transfer

Years after incorporation, the foreign parent often wants to inject fresh money: to fund growth, to restore equity after losses, or to bring in a new partner. The reflex is to wire the amount to the French subsidiary’s account and call it capital. French law treats that reflex as a trap. Paying money into the company’s account without a capital decision creates, at best, a shareholder loan recorded in a current account, an avance en compte courant, which is a repayable debt with its own tax treatment, not equity. At worst, an undocumented injection is reclassified later in a dispute or an audit, with the founder discovering that the supposed shares were never issued. Increasing the capital requires a collective decision of the shareholders taken under the conditions fixed by the statutes for a SAS or by law for a SARL, followed by subscription, release of at least the legal fraction of the new cash, a fresh deposit of the new funds with an authorised holder, an update of the statutes recording the new capital, and a modifying filing on the guichet unique that ends in publication on the BODACC, the Bulletin officiel des annonces civiles et commerciales, the official gazette where company registrations and changes are published. Each step leaves a paper trail, and a missing step can be attacked for years.

A Court of Cassation case illustrates how strictly French courts police capital operations, even when the business logic seemed clear to those in control. In a SAS where an extraordinary meeting of 30 June 2015 “a décidé de la réduction à zéro du capital social et de l’augmentation de ce capital par création d’actions nouvelles, avec maintien du droit préférentiel de souscription aux actionnaires”, and where the president then subscribed the whole increase and became the sole shareholder, the minority shareholder challenged the operation and the commercial court president suspended the resolutions recording the new capital and the amended statutes (Court of Cassation, Commercial chamber, 4 January 2023, nos. 21-10.609 and 21-12.515, full decision on courdecassation.fr). The technique used, a reduction to zero followed by an immediate increase, is known as a coup d’accordéon: it wipes out shareholders who do not put fresh money in. The case ended in partial cassation after years of proceedings, which is precisely the warning for a foreign group tempted to restructure its French subsidiary by email: preferential subscription rights, the DPS, the droit préférentiel de souscription that lets existing shareholders subscribe first to new shares, valuation of the shares, and the majority rules for the decision are litigated line by line, and a resolution adopted abroad without French procedural discipline can be frozen by a judge before it produces any effect.

For routine top-ups from abroad, build the same discipline as at incorporation, scaled to the operation. First, check the statutes of the SAS for who decides an increase and at what majority, or the legal majority for a SARL, and hold the decision in writing with remote participation organised exactly as the statutes allow. Second, respect the subscription rights of existing shareholders or have them validly waived in the decision itself, since a waiver after the event rarely cures the defect. Third, release at least the legal fraction of the new cash, half for new SAS shares, and deposit it again with an authorised holder within eight days, because the new certificate must join the modifying file. Fourth, update the articles recording the capital and file the change through the guichet unique, keeping the new Kbis as proof that the increased capital is now enforceable against third parties. Fifth, remember the lock described above: if the original capital was never fully paid, settle it before subscribing new cash shares, failing which the whole increase is void. Founders based in Paris and the Île-de-France region handle these filings with the Paris registry, whose practical processing times lengthen in summer and year-end peaks, so plan increases a full quarter before the cash is operationally needed, and keep a French-speaking contact able to answer registry queries within days. None of this requires the founder to fly in: decisions, powers of attorney, and transfers can be organised remotely, but they must exist on paper before the money moves, not after.

Conclusion

Depositing the share capital of a French company from abroad is a four-beat sequence that rewards preparation and punishes improvisation. Decide the right fraction to release at once, half of the cash shares for a SAS and at least a fifth of the cash parts for a SARL, with in-kind contributions transferred in full. Deposit that fraction with an authorised holder, the CDC, a notaire, or a bank, within eight days, and obtain a certificate whose names and amounts match the statutes to the letter for the guichet unique filing. Leave the funds frozen until the RCS registration delivers the Kbis, then have the company’s representative withdraw them, while keeping the six-month court remedy in mind if registration fails. Finally, diary the five-year deadline for the balance, because the debt bears interest automatically, any interested party can force the call under penalty, courts treat expiry itself as the due date, and no new cash shares can be issued until the old capital is fully paid. Foreign founders who master this sequence turn a notorious administrative obstacle into a routine: the blocked certificate arrives on time, the Kbis follows, the funds are released, and later injections follow the same documented path instead of becoming the dispute that the Lyon and Intégrale decisions illustrate.