You did the work, you sent the invoice from abroad, and the French client simply does not pay. No dispute about quality, no counterclaim, just silence, then vague promises, then nothing. If you run your French business from London, New York, Montreal, Singapore or Dubai, this situation feels worse than it is: you do not need to fly to France, you do not need a French office, and you do not need to accept the loss. French law gives the foreign-based creditor a complete toolbox, from money that accrues automatically on the unpaid invoice to a fast paper procedure that produces an enforceable court order, and finally to seizure of the debtor’s bank account by a French enforcement officer.

This guide explains the whole path in the order you will actually use it. First, what your unpaid invoice already earns while you wait: statutory payment deadlines, late-payment interest and the flat 40 euro recovery fee. Second, how to put your file in order so that no judge can turn you away: mandatory invoice mentions, proof of the debt and limitation periods. Third, the French fast track for uncontested money claims, the injonction de payer, which you can start from abroad with a simple petition to the court clerk. Fourth, how to secure the money before it disappears and how to force payment: protective seizure, interim payment orders and cross-border enforcement inside the European Union and beyond. Every acronym is explained, every step gives the competent court and the exact legal basis, and the case law cited comes with its official reference so you can check it yourself.

I. Your Unpaid French Invoice Already Earns Money: Deadlines, Interest and Fees

A. What late-payment interest and fees can a foreign company charge a French client that pays late?

The starting point is the payment deadline itself, because interest only runs once the deadline has passed. Under Article L. 441-10 of the French Commercial Code, the principle is simple: unless the parties agree otherwise, the invoice is payable within 30 days of receipt of the goods or performance of the service, as the official service-public.fr guide to payment deadlines between professionals confirms. The parties may agree on a longer term, but the statute caps it: 60 days from the date the invoice is issued, or 45 days end of month, provided the 45-day option is written into the contract and is not abusive toward the supplier. Any clause that pushes the deadline beyond these caps can be struck down and fined, so the first thing to do with your file is to read your general terms and conditions, known in France as the CGV (conditions générales de vente), and the contract: whatever they say, the legal caps apply.

Once the deadline passes, three sums accrue in your favour without you having to ask for them in advance. First, late-payment interest, called pénalités de retard. These penalties are due automatically, without any reminder letter and without a formal demand, as service-public.fr states: they can be applied without sending a payment reminder or a mise en demeure, the formal demand for payment. The rate cannot be lower than three times the French legal interest rate, and the Commercial Code recommends the refinancing rate of the European Central Bank, the ECB, plus 10 percentage points. For the second half of 2026, the ECB refinancing rate in force on 1 July is 2.40 percent, which produces a penalty rate of 12.40 percent, exactly the figure published for France in the European Commission’s late-payment tables. On a 50,000 euro invoice paid six months late, that is more than 3,000 euros of interest alone.

Second, a flat recovery fee of 40 euros, called the indemnité forfaitaire pour frais de recouvrement, is added to every late invoice between professionals under Article D. 441-5 of the Commercial Code. It must be mentioned in your CGV and on the invoice itself to be claimed smoothly, and it is due per invoice, not per client. If your actual recovery costs exceed 40 euros, for example the fee of the commissaire de justice, the enforcement officer formerly called huissier de justice who serves court papers and enforces judgments, you can claim the documented surplus on top. Third, if your contract provides a late-payment clause with a higher rate, that clause applies, within the limits of usury and penalty-clause review by the courts. The practical lesson is that a French unpaid invoice is never frozen: each month of silence increases the debtor’s bill, and Article L. 441-10 of the Commercial Code with its implementing rule in the official guide to payment deadlines and penalties is the text to put in your first reminder letter, because French debtors and their accountants know it.

One warning matters for foreign founders: the 40 euro fee and the penalty rate only work between professionals. If your French debtor is a consumer, a different body of law applies, with prior formal notice requirements and no flat fee. Check the quality of your debtor before you write: SIREN number (the nine-digit business identifier issued by INSEE, the French statistics institute, visible on every Kbis, the official company identity certificate issued by the greffe, the court clerk’s office of the commercial court), VAT number, company or individual status. A client who ordered as a company but claims to be a consumer at the payment stage is a classic bad-faith move, and your contract, order forms and email headers usually settle the point.

B. How do you make your invoice bulletproof before going to court from abroad?

French judges grant fast payment orders only on documentary proof, so the second step is to assemble a file that speaks for itself. The invoice must carry the mandatory mentions listed in Article L. 441-9 of the Commercial Code, detailed on the official page on mandatory invoice mentions: names and addresses of both parties, SIREN numbers, the legal form and share capital of your French company, date and number of the invoice, precise description, quantities, unit prices excluding tax, applicable VAT rates or the exemption wording, the payment deadline, the late-penalty rate, and the 40 euro flat-fee mention. A missing SIREN, a missing penalty rate or an invoice issued in the name of the founder instead of the company under formation are defects the debtor’s lawyer will exploit, and the service-public guide warns that an invoice issued in the creator’s name while the company is being registered can lead to rejection of the VAT deduction.

Beyond the invoice itself, gather the proof that the debt is certain, of a fixed amount and due, the three adjectives French courts repeat in every payment case: certaine, liquide et exigible. The signed quote or purchase order, the contract, the delivery slips or timesheets, the acceptance report without reservations, the email in which the client acknowledges receipt, and your statement of account showing the unpaid balance. Keep every exchange in which the client promises to pay without disputing the substance: a debtor who writes that cash is tight but never contests the work has handed you the evidence that the claim is undisputed, which is exactly the condition the fast-track procedure requires. Conversely, if the client genuinely disputes quality with specifics, dates and photos, say so honestly in your file, because the fast track is reserved for claims that are not seriously contestable, and a hidden dispute discovered by the judge will cost you months.

Watch the clock. The general limitation period for commercial claims between professionals is five years from the day the debt becomes due, and each formal step, a formal demand served by a commissaire de justice, a court petition, an acknowledgment of debt, restarts or interrupts it. Do not let the file sleep: send a first written reminder as soon as the deadline passes, then a mise en demeure by registered letter with acknowledgment of receipt or, better, by act of a commissaire de justice, which also proves the date of receipt. From abroad, a French commissaire de justice can be instructed by email with scanned documents, and the act is served in France without your presence. This demand letter is not legally required before claiming penalties, which run automatically, but it fixes the starting point of negotiations, it sometimes unlocks payment within days, and it shows the judge that you behaved as a diligent creditor.

II. Force Payment From Abroad: Fast Court Orders, Protective Seizure and Enforcement

A. How do you get a French payment order without travelling: injonction de payer and the European order?

The injonction de payer, the order-for-payment procedure, is the workhorse of French debt recovery, and it was designed for files like yours: a documented invoice, a debtor who does not pay and does not argue. Under Article 1405 of the Code of Civil Procedure, any creditor can petition the judge for an order requiring the debtor to pay a contractual debt or an obligation arising from a bill of exchange, promissory note or accepted assignment of professional receivables. For a commercial invoice, the competent judge is the president of the commercial court, the tribunal de commerce, of the place where the debtor is established; for a non-commercial debtor, it is the judicial court, the tribunal judiciaire. You do not need to be in France: a French lawyer or an authorised representative files the requête, the petition, with the court clerk, the greffe, attaching the invoices, the contract, the delivery proofs and the statement of account, exactly as the Court of Cassation recalled in its opinion of 25 September 2025: « En cas de recouvrement d’une créance suivant la procédure d’injonction de payer, l’article 1407 du code de procédure civile prévoit que la demande est formée par requête remise ou adressée au greffe. » The reference is demande d’avis no. T 25-70.013, opinion no. 15017 P+B of the Second Civil Chamber, published at courdecassation.fr/decision/68d4d7811e8f43fdd30b5df7.

If the documents show that the claim is well founded in whole or in part, the judge issues the ordonnance portant injonction de payer, the payment order, for the amount he accepts, without hearing the debtor. The Court of Cassation states the rule in its opinion no. 15017 P+B of 25 September 2025 (Court of Cassation, opinion no. T 25-70.013): « Selon l’article 1409 du même code, si, au vu des documents produits, la demande lui paraît fondée en tout ou partie, le juge rend une ordonnance portant injonction de payer pour la somme qu’il retient. » If the judge rejects the petition or grants only part of it, that refusal cannot be appealed by the creditor, who simply falls back on ordinary proceedings. The order must then be served on the debtor by a commissaire de justice within six months, failing which it lapses. Service, called signification, is the step that starts the debtor’s one-month opposition period, and the same Court of Cassation opinion recalls the debtor’s right in one sentence (opinion no. T 25-70.013): « Aux termes de l’article 1412 du même code, le débiteur peut s’opposer à l’ordonnance portant injonction de payer. » Under Article 1416 of the Code of Civil Procedure, opposition must be filed within one month of service, and the official service-public guide confirms in its English version that the debtor has one month from service of the order to file opposition, that the time limit suspends enforcement, and that the judgment on opposition replaces the order.

Two scenarios follow, and both are manageable from abroad. If the debtor does nothing within the month, you ask the clerk for the certificate of absence of opposition and the order becomes enforceable, an enforceable title that a commissaire de justice can execute against bank accounts, movable property or receivables. If the debtor files opposition, the case continues as an ordinary adversarial hearing before the same court, with summons, exchange of arguments and a judgment, and your lawyer represents you without your presence. For a step-by-step account focused solely on that petition, from the documents to attach to service of the order, see our companion guide on the procedure itself (French Customer Has Not Paid Your Invoice: How a Foreign Company Recovers the Debt With an Injonction de Payer); the present guide goes further, covering what the invoice earns before any court step, how to freeze assets urgently, how to obtain an interim payment, and how to enforce across borders. Here the case law delivers a strategic lesson that shapes everything upstream: once the payment order has become final, the debtor cannot reopen the same dispute through a parallel lawsuit. The Second Civil Chamber held on 1 February 2018, appeal no. 17-10.849, that « il incombe au défendeur de présenter, dès l’instance relative à la première demande, l’ensemble des moyens qu’il estime de nature à justifier son rejet total ou partiel », and that « l’autorité de chose jugée attachée à l’ordonnance portant injonction de payer faisait obstacle aux demandes relatives à la résolution de conventions conclues entre les parties », so that the debtor had to file proper opposition in time to raise all its defences at once (courdecassation.fr/decision/5fca9cd77a71069271d1fc3d). In plain terms, a debtor who sleeps through the opposition period loses the right to complain later, which is why serving the order correctly and watching the one-month clock is the heart of the procedure.

When the debtor is in another European Union country, or when you want a title that travels, add the European order for payment under Regulation 1896/2006 to your options: a single standard-form procedure for uncontested cross-border money claims that produces an order enforceable in all Member States without any intermediate declaration of enforceability. In practice, for a French debtor company with assets in France, the domestic injonction de payer remains faster and cheaper, while the European order is the tool of choice when your French company invoices a client established in Germany, Spain, Italy or the Netherlands and the contract has a cross-border element. If your debtor is outside the European Union, for example in the United States, the United Kingdom or the United Arab Emirates, enforcement will depend on the bilateral treaties and on the local exequatur procedure, and you should ask your lawyer to check enforceability in the debtor’s country before spending on French proceedings. This enforceability audit, done once at the start, determines whether you litigate in France, in the debtor’s country, or whether a negotiated settlement with staggered payments secured by a guarantee is the commercially rational outcome. Founders who are still structuring their French presence can usefully read our companion guide on setting up the company, the bank account, the Kbis registration certificate and the first hire (Setting Up a Company in France as a Foreign Founder), because a cleanly registered company with proper CGV recovers its invoices far more easily than an improvised structure.

B. How do you secure the money before it disappears and seize it: protective measures, interim orders and the commissaire de justice?

A payment order is worthless against an emptied account, so French law lets you freeze first and argue later. Under Article L. 511-1 of the Code of Civil Enforcement Procedures, any person whose claim appears well founded in principle can ask the judge for authorisation to take a protective measure over the debtor’s assets, without any prior formal demand, provided there are circumstances likely to threaten recovery. The Court of Cassation restated the rule word for word on 22 May 2025, appeal no. J 22-23.280: « Selon l’article L. 511-1 du code des procédures civiles d’exécution, toute personne dont la créance paraît fondée en son principe peut solliciter du juge l’autorisation de pratiquer une mesure conservatoire sur les biens de son débiteur, sans commandement préalable, si elle justifie de circonstances susceptibles d’en menacer le recouvrement. » The same decision adds the useful exception of Article L. 511-2 of the same code: « Par exception, l’article L. 511-2, alinéa 1er, du même code prévoit qu’une autorisation préalable du juge n’est pas nécessaire lorsque le créancier se prévaut d’un titre exécutoire ou d’une décision de justice qui n’a pas encore force exécutoire. » (courdecassation.fr/decision/682ebbb99d9918cbebdef209).

In practice, the flagship protective measure for an unpaid invoice is the saisie conservatoire des créances, the protective seizure of claims, typically served on the debtor’s bank: the account is frozen up to the amount of your claim plus a provision for costs, and the bank must disclose the balance. The petition is filed without the debtor being heard, the enforcement judge, called the juge de l’exécution or JEX, rules within days, and a commissaire de justice serves the seizure. The procedure is deliberately light: on 5 December 2019, appeal no. 18-15.050, the Court of Cassation held that a creditor showing a claim that appears well founded and circumstances threatening recovery « peut solliciter du juge de l’exécution l’autorisation de pratiquer une mesure conservatoire sur les biens du débiteur, sans avoir à énoncer dans la requête de motifs justifiant qu’il soit recouru à une procédure non contradictoire » (courdecassation.fr/decision/5fca6124e7a9f448cc42358b). Warning signs that justify urgency include bounced transfers, a debtor who empties accounts between your reminders, a sudden change of bank, press reports of difficulties, registration of privileges or a BODACC notice, the Bulletin officiel des annonces civiles et commerciales in which French insolvency and company events are published. Once the seizure is in place, you must start proceedings on the merits within one month to obtain an enforceable title, failing which the seizure lapses, so the protective measure and the injonction de payer are filed as a coordinated pair.

When the debt is documented but the debtor raises a smokescreen to slow you down, the interim route, called the référé, offers a hearing within weeks and a provisional payment. The enforcement judge or the president of the commercial court can order a provision, an advance on the final judgment, where the obligation is not seriously contestable. The Court of Cassation confirmed the formula on 19 June 2025, appeal no. 23-23.715: « Vu l’article 835, alinéa 2, du code de procédure civile », and « Selon ce texte, le juge des référés peut accorder une provision au créancier dans les cas où l’existence de l’obligation n’est pas sérieusement contestable. » (courdecassation.fr/decision/6853d9df5253664177a3e734). The order is provisionally enforceable even if appealed, which means the commissaire de justice can seize on its basis while the merits are still debated. For a foreign-based creditor, the référé-provision is often the best balance of speed and cost: one hearing, documentary evidence, no full trial, and a title that forces the debtor to choose between paying and funding an appeal with frozen accounts.

Enforcement itself is the exclusive business of the commissaire de justice, a regulated ministerial officer whose acts carry public authority. With your enforceable title, whether a final payment order, a judgment on opposition or a référé provision, he serves a commandement de payer, the formal order to pay, then proceeds to seizure: saisie-attribution on bank accounts, which transfers the seized sum directly to you; saisie-vente on equipment, vehicles or stock; saisie des rémunérations or of receivables owed by the debtor’s own clients. Each seizure follows strict deadlines and notices, and irregular service can annul the measure, which is why a local officer matters more than your physical presence: you instruct from abroad, he acts in France, and his reports, procès-verbaux, are the documents your bank and your accountants need to book the recovery. Add the accruing interest, the 40 euro fee per invoice and the court and service costs, which the losing debtor generally bears, and the economics of the case usually favour action over resignation as soon as the claim exceeds a few thousand euros. Our analysis of French corporate tax timing and cash management for foreign-run companies (French Corporate Tax for Companies Run From Abroad) shows how recovered sums and their interest integrate into your French taxable result, a point to raise with your accountant once the money lands.

Conclusion

A French client who does not pay is a commercial problem with a legal solution, not a fatality of distance. Start today: check the deadline in your CGV against the 30-day default and the 60-day and 45-day caps, compute the penalties at the ECB rate plus 10 points with the 40 euro fee per invoice, and send a firm demand that cites Article L. 441-10. Put the file in order with the mandatory invoice mentions, the contract, the delivery proofs and every written acknowledgment from the debtor. Then strike in the right order: protective seizure if the money may vanish, injonction de payer before the commercial court for the enforceable title, référé-provision if the debtor hides behind pretexts, and enforcement by a commissaire de justice who acts in France on your instructions. Each step can be taken while you live abroad, each deadline is counted in days and months rather than years, and the case law above shows that judges reward creditors who arrive with complete files and punish debtors who sleep on their rights. The invoice you save this quarter funds the growth you planned when you chose France.