You formed your company in France, you invoice from a French SAS or SARL, and you run everything from London, Dubai, New York or Singapore. Then a French customer stops paying. A fifteen-thousand-euro invoice sits untouched for ninety days, reminders bounce off an accounting department, and you wonder whether collecting from abroad means flying to Paris, hiring a full litigation team and waiting two years. French law answers that worry with a clear sequence: your invoice already produces automatic late penalties and a flat recovery fee the day after the due date, a formal notice called a mise en demeure starts legal interest running, and a one-sided fast-track procedure called the injonction de payer lets you obtain an enforceable payment order without an initial hearing. If the debtor stays silent, that order becomes equivalent to a contested judgment. If the debtor objects, the case simply continues as an ordinary trial for which your file is already prepared. This guide explains each step for a founder who lives outside France: how to count the deadline and the penalties on a French business-to-business invoice, how to send a formal notice from abroad that a French court will respect, which fast-track route fits your file, and how enforcement through a commissaire de justice turns the order into money on your French bank account. Every acronym is explained, every decisive rule is cited to its official text, and the two court decisions quoted were read in full for this article.

I. Your Unpaid French Invoice Earns Money Before Any Judge: Payment Deadlines, Automatic Penalties and the Formal Notice That Starts Interest

A. How to Count the Payment Deadline, the ECB-Plus-Ten Penalty and the 40-Euro Fee on a French B2B Invoice

French law starts from a default that surprises many foreign founders: unless your sales conditions or a signed agreement say otherwise, your customer must pay within thirty days of receiving the goods or of performance of the service. When the parties do agree on a term, that agreed term cannot exceed sixty days from the invoice date, and a longer-looking alternative of forty-five days end-of-month is only valid if it is expressly written into the contract and does not amount to a manifest abuse toward the creditor. These ceilings come from Article L. 441-10 of the Commercial Code, which governs business-to-business payment periods in France. For periodic invoices within the meaning of VAT rules, the agreed period cannot exceed forty-five days from the invoice date. Compare every overdue invoice against these ceilings before anything else, because a contractual clause granting ninety or one hundred and twenty days is simply unenforceable against you, and the statutory ceiling replaces it.

The same article gives you the penalty rate without any need to negotiate it in advance. Your sales conditions must state the applicable rate, and if they say nothing usable, the fallback rate is the interest rate applied by the European Central Bank to its most recent refinancing operation, plus ten percentage points. The statute refines the timing: the rate for the first half of the year is the rate in force on 1 January, and the rate for the second half is the rate in force on 1 July. In practice you therefore look up the ECB refinancing rate at the relevant half-year date, add ten points, and apply that annual rate day by day from the day after the due date shown on the invoice. Three features make this weapon strong. First, the penalties run by operation of law: Article L. 441-10 states that “Les pénalités de retard sont exigibles sans qu’un rappel soit nécessaire”, which means no reminder is needed before they start accruing. Second, the floor is protective: parties may agree on a different rate only if it is not lower than three times the French legal interest rate. Third, on top of these penalties, every professional in late payment owes your company a flat recovery indemnity as of right, and Article D. 441-5 of the Commercial Code fixes the amount in these terms: “Le montant de l’indemnité forfaitaire pour frais de recouvrement prévue au II de l’article L. 441-10 est fixé à 40 euros.” Where your documented recovery costs exceed forty euros, the same statute lets you claim additional compensation on proof, so keep every invoice from counsel and every bailiff-scale fee receipt.

French courts apply these penalties routinely, including against debtors who raise quality disputes as a shield. In a decision of the Commercial Chamber of the Cour de cassation dated 3 October 2018, appeal No. 16-28.075, published at https://www.courdecassation.fr/decision/5fca84c5c7d9a9754dd39156, a buyer ordered leather goods, left invoices of 29,487.85 euros unpaid and counterclaimed for alleged defects in colour and delivery. The court of appeal ordered payment of the full price with interest at the ECB refinancing rate plus ten points running from the sixty-first day of each invoice, and the Cour de cassation rejected the buyer’s appeal in full: the operative words of the confirmed order were payment of “la somme de 29.487,85 €, majorée du taux d’intérêt équivalent au taux d’intérêt appliqué par la Banque Centrale Européenne en son opération de refinancement la plus récente, majoré de 10 points de pourcentage à compter du 61ème jour de chaque facture constituant le montant total de la condamnation totale prononcée”, followed by “REJETTE le pourvoi”. The lesson for a founder abroad is direct: a complaint about quality, raised only after the invoices fell due and unsupported by a contemporaneous written protest, does not erase the price or the penalties. A second illustration comes from the Commercial Chamber decision of 17 November 2021, appeal No. 20-15.428, published at https://www.courdecassation.fr/decision/6194ba485a317cc1d116fc0c, where the lower court had fixed the creditor’s claim “à la somme de 315 748,11 euros au titre des factures impayées” and its late-penalty claim “à la somme de 39 021,32 euros”, and the Cour de cassation again ended the case with “REJETTE le pourvoi”. Penalties of nearly forty thousand euros on top of three hundred thousand euros of principal show why computing them precisely from day one matters rather than treating them as decoration.

Two administrative realities reinforce your position. First, your debtor’s delay exposes the debtor itself to public enforcement: Article L. 441-16 of the Commercial Code punishes breach of the payment periods with an administrative fine of up to 75,000 euros for an individual and two million euros for a company, doubled on repeat offending within two years, and the DGCCRF, the French competition, consumer and anti-fraud authority, is the body that investigates and fines. Mentioning in your formal notice that the delay also breaches provisions policed by the DGCCRF is legitimate information, not a threat, and large French groups take it seriously because fines are published. Second, your own invoices must carry the required payment language: the same fining article sanctions a creditor that omits the penalty rate and recovery-indemnity wording from its sales conditions. The official business guidance on payment periods, kept by the Ministry of the Economy at https://www.economie.gouv.fr/entreprises/delais-paiement, is a useful cross-check, and founders who want the full incorporation picture can re-read our pillar guide on setting up a company in France as a foreign founder, from bank account and Kbis extract to VAT and first hire, which explains the Kbis, the official extract of your company’s entry in the RCS, the Registre du commerce et des sociétés kept by the greffe, the clerk’s office of the commercial court.

B. How to Send a Formal Notice From Abroad That a French Court Will Respect

A mise en demeure is the formal demand that French law requires before certain consequences attach, and it also serves as the backbone of your future court file. Article 1344 of the Civil Code defines it in one sentence: “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 document carrying a sufficiently clear demand to pay, or, where your contract says so, the mere arrival of the due date. For a founder living abroad, the practical conclusion is that a letter can qualify, but only if it demands payment in unmistakable words, identifies each invoice by number, date and amount, states a final deadline, and warns of the penalties, interest and court action that follow. An email that merely asks when payment might arrive does not meet the test, while a registered letter that orders payment of a specified sum within fifteen days does.

Why does this formality deserve such care when penalties already run without a reminder. Because the general law of late-payment damages runs from the formal notice, not from the invoice date. Article 1231-6 of the Civil Code provides that “Les dommages et intérêts dus à raison du retard dans le paiement d’une obligation de somme d’argent consistent dans l’intérêt au taux légal, à compter de la mise en demeure.” The creditor does not have to prove any loss to obtain that legal-interest compensation, and where the debtor’s bad faith caused a separate harm beyond the delay, additional damages remain available. A later judgment awarding you compensation will itself carry legal interest, since Article 1231-7 of the Civil Code attaches interest at the legal rate to any damages award. Draft your notice so that it starts that clock on a documented date: send it by registered letter with acknowledgment of receipt to the debtor’s registered office as shown on its Kbis extract, keep the postal receipts, and consider having a commissaire de justice serve it. The commissaire de justice is the enforcement officer who replaced the former huissier de justice after the 2022 merger of the professions, and service through that officer produces an official report of delivery that no debtor can plausibly deny. From abroad you instruct the officer by email with the debtor’s exact corporate name and address, and the officer serves within days anywhere in France.

Build the evidence bundle at the same time as the notice, because the fast-track judge decides on papers. Assemble the signed contract or accepted quotation, the general sales conditions showing the payment term and penalty clause, delivery slips or service acceptance records, every invoice with its date and due date, proof of sending, the full email thread including any acknowledgment of the debt or promise to pay, and bank statements showing non-payment. Check the debtor on public registers before spending on proceedings: the BODACC, the Bulletin officiel des annonces civiles et commerciales, publishes insolvency openings, and the Kbis extract obtained from the greffe confirms the debtor still exists at the address you will serve. If the BODACC reveals a safeguard, judicial recovery or liquidation proceeding, pause and read the warning below in section II, because collective proceedings freeze individual payment and change the entire strategy. If the registers show a healthy company that simply prefers to pay others first, your notice should say so firmly: list the invoices, compute the ECB-plus-ten penalties to the date of the letter, add the forty-euro indemnity per late invoice practice accepted by courts, set a final deadline of eight to fifteen days, and announce the payment-order application. Write the letter in French even though this guide is in English, because it will become court exhibit number one, and keep an English translation for your own records. Send a copy by ordinary email the same day so the debtor cannot pretend the registered letter went astray.

II. How to Force Payment Without Moving to France: Payment Order, European Order, Fast Trial and Seizure

A. Which Fast-Track Route Fits Your File: French Payment Order, Interim Provision or European Order

The injonction de payer is France’s one-sided order-to-pay procedure: the judge rules on your papers without summoning the debtor, and the debtor only enters the scene when the order is served. Article 1405 of the Code of Civil Procedure opens the route where “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”. An unpaid invoice for delivered goods or performed services is the textbook case: contractual cause, determined amount, documented by the contract and the invoice. The official public-service page describing the procedure for citizens and businesses is kept at https://www.service-public.fr/particuliers/vosdroits/F1746, and the registry practice follows the statute, not summaries, so anchor every filing choice to the articles below.

Jurisdiction follows the debtor, not you. Article 1406 of the Code of Civil Procedure sends the application to the president of the commercial court or the judicial court according to subject matter, then adds the decisive sentence: “Le juge territorialement compétent est celui du lieu où demeure le ou l’un des débiteurs poursuivis.” Those venue rules are a matter of public policy, so a clause in your contract pointing elsewhere cannot move the payment order to your home court, and the judge must raise lack of jurisdiction on his own motion. For a Paris-based debtor that means the Paris commercial court through its greffe; for a debtor in Lyon, Marseille or Bordeaux, the court of that city. Your application, called a requête, is filed or sent to that registry by you or any representative, and Article 1407 of the Code of Civil Procedure requires that “la requête contient l’indication précise du montant de la somme réclamée avec le décompte des différents éléments de la créance, le fondement de celle-ci ainsi que le bordereau des documents justificatifs produits à l’appui de la requête”, accompanied by the documents themselves. Concretely, your representative files a short petition stating principal, ECB-plus-ten penalties with their computation, the forty-euro indemnity, legal interest from the formal notice and costs, lists the exhibits in an inventory, and attaches the bundle prepared at the notice stage. Representation from abroad is straightforward: counsel files under a signed authority, and you never board a plane for this phase because there is no hearing.

If the judge is convinced, he issues the payment order without hearing the debtor, and a commissaire de justice serves it on the debtor. The debtor then has one month to object, since Article 1416 of the Code of Civil Procedure states that “L’opposition est formée dans le mois qui suit la signification de l’ordonnance.” An objection lodged by declaration at the registry or by registered letter, stating the debtor’s address on pain of nullity, goes under Article 1415 of the Code of Civil Procedure to the court that issued the order: “L’opposition est portée, selon le cas, devant la juridiction dont le juge ou le président a rendu l’ordonnance portant injonction de payer.” Do not treat an objection as a defeat: the case simply becomes an ordinary adversarial trial in which your already-complete bundle gives you a head start, the court hears both sides and its judgment replaces the order. Where no objection arrives, the reformed procedure makes the order grow into a full title by itself: Article 1422 of the Code of Civil Procedure provides that after the suspensive periods expire and two months have passed since service, “Elle produit alors tous les effets d’un jugement contradictoire.” The order is then enforceable like a contested judgment, with no appeal available against it as such. Founders should calendar three dates on the day of service: the one-month objection deadline, the two-month consolidation point, and the five-year outer limit discussed below.

Two alternatives deserve a deliberate choice rather than a reflex. First, the interim provision in référé: where the debt is documented but you want speed with a hearing, Article 873 of the Code of Civil Procedure lets the president of the commercial court act where “l’existence de l’obligation n’est pas sérieusement contestable” by granting the creditor an advance on the claim, “il peut accorder une provision au créancier”. The hearing comes within weeks, the debtor is summoned and heard, and the provisional award, though technically interim, is immediately enforceable and very often ends the dispute because the debtor that cannot show a serious contest pays rather than relitigating. Choose référé provision where the debtor disputes quality noisily but in writing weakly, and where a judge seeing both sides quickly helps more than a one-sided order the debtor would certainly oppose. Second, the European order for payment under Regulation (EC) No 1896/2006 of the European Parliament and of the Council, whose official text is kept on EUR-Lex at Regulation (EC) No 1896/2006 creating a European order for payment procedure (official EUR-Lex reference CELEX:32006R1896): for an uncontested cross-border monetary claim within the European Union, it produces an order enforceable in the debtor’s Member State without any intermediate validation. It fits a French company suing a German or Italian customer, not a French debtor in France, so a foreign founder whose debtor sits in France uses the French payment order first. Where the debtor sits outside France but inside the Union and the claim is genuinely uncontested, the European route avoids parallel proceedings. In every route, file as though an objection will come: full contract, full delivery proof, full computation. The founder who prepares the complete file once uses it in all three procedures without redoing anything.

B. How to Turn the Paper Into Money: Enforcement, Costs and the Traps That Cancel Everything

An enforceable order is not money until an enforcement officer converts it, and French law reserves that conversion to the commissaire de justice acting on an enforceable title. The foundation is Article L. 111-1 of the Code of Civil Enforcement Procedures: “Tout créancier peut, dans les conditions prévues par la loi, contraindre son débiteur défaillant à exécuter ses obligations à son égard.” From abroad you send the enforceable order, the debtor’s bank details if your contract or prior transfers reveal them, and the debtor’s registered-office address to the officer, who then chooses the seizure technique. The bank-account seizure, called saisie-attribution, freezes and attributes the debtor’s credit balance to you up to the amount owed, and it is the preferred tool where you know where the debtor banks. The tangible-asset seizure, called saisie-vente, inventories equipment, stock or vehicles for auction where cash is hidden but the business visibly operates. A protective seizure before judgment exists for creditors who can show urgency and a threatened recovery, but it requires prior judicial authorization, so founders usually move fastest by securing the payment order first and seizing immediately once it becomes enforceable. Serve the seizure through the officer in the debtor’s area: a Paris debtor means an officer practicing in Paris and the surrounding Île-de-France departments, familiar with the Paris enforcement judge, the juge de l’exécution, who hears any challenge to the seizure within short deadlines.

Budget the operation honestly. Filing the payment-order application itself costs a modest registry fee, service of each procedural act by the officer is charged on the regulated national scale, and counsel’s fee for drafting the petition and managing the timetable is the main variable. Advance those sums without resentment, because the losing debtor is ordered to reimburse the procedural costs and the enforcement costs of an enforceable title fall on the debtor by statute, while your counsel’s fee can be partly recovered through the standard costs order under Article 700 of the Code of Civil Procedure that French courts routinely grant. Against that budget, weigh the arithmetic of waiting: ECB-plus-ten penalties accrue daily, the forty-euro indemnity attaches, legal interest runs from your formal notice, and every month of delay by the debtor increases the seizure base. The two court decisions quoted above show penalties alone reaching tens of thousands of euros, which is why prompt action beats hopeful waiting even after deducting enforcement costs. Keep your French corporate bank account open and reachable throughout, because seized funds land on the account you designate, and a founder who closed the account while moving abroad discovers at the worst moment that disbursing the seized sum requires fresh banking paperwork. URSSAF, the body that collects French social contributions, and the VAT administration have no role in this private recovery, but keep your own company compliant and your Kbis current, since a debtor that digs for leverage will attack an irregular creditor file first.

Three traps destroy more files than any defence on the merits. The first is time: Article L. 110-4 of the Commercial Code sets the rule that “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.” Five years from the due date looks generous until a founder spends three years sending friendly reminders from abroad and discovers the debtor now pleads limitation. Interrupt early by serving the formal notice through the officer and filing the payment order, because judicial demand interrupts the clock. The second trap is the debtor’s collective proceeding: the moment a safeguard, recovery or liquidation is opened and published in the BODACC, individual enforcement stops, seized funds may have to be released depending on timing, and your claim must be declared to the creditors’ representative within the statutory deadline. Article L. 441-10 of the Commercial Code itself warns that “le créancier ne peut invoquer le bénéfice de ces indemnités lorsque l’ouverture d’une procédure de sauvegarde, de redressement ou de liquidation judiciaire interdit le paiement à son échéance de la créance qui lui est due”, so penalties and the flat indemnity stop where the freeze starts. That is why the BODACC check recommended in section I belongs before every filing, and why a debtor offering strange partial payments while rumours of insolvency circulate should trigger an immediate filing rather than patience. The third trap is the empty file at the hearing after an objection: some founders obtain the order on invoices alone, then face a debtor that produces delivery complaints for the first time before the trial court. The objection procedure exists precisely for that scenario, and the court that hears the objection decides the whole merits, so your delivery slips, acceptance emails and post-delivery silence records must already sit in the bundle. A debtor whose only defence is cash-flow difficulty loses; a creditor whose only evidence is the invoice risks a reduction.

Conclusion

Collecting a French unpaid invoice from abroad follows an order that French courts apply every day: verify the payment ceiling and compute the automatic penalties, serve a formal notice that starts legal interest and assembles your evidence, file the payment-order application before the debtor’s court through a representative, calendar the one-month objection period and the two-month consolidation point, and hand the enforceable title to a commissaire de justice for seizure before the five-year limitation or a collective proceeding changes the game. The ECB-plus-ten rate and the forty-euro indemnity reward creditors who count precisely, the one-sided order rewards creditors who document completely, and enforcement rewards creditors who move while the debtor is still solvent. Run this sequence from your desk abroad exactly as a Paris company would run it from its own office, because French recovery law gives the distant founder the same instruments, the same deadlines and the same interest as the founder next door.