Your French customer has stopped answering emails, the invoice is two months overdue, and you run your company from London, New York, Dubai or Singapore. The amount is real money for a young business, and the distance makes every step feel heavier: you cannot knock on the debtor’s door, you do not know the French courts, and you wonder whether a foreign owner can even force a French company to pay. The answer is yes, and France offers foreign creditors a ladder that runs from a simple formal letter to a court order obtained without a hearing and enforced against French bank accounts. This guide explains each rung for a business reader who lives abroad: the formal demand that starts interest running automatically, the late-payment penalties that French law adds to every B2B invoice by default, the evidence file that wins cases, the fast injonction de payer procedure that produces an enforceable order in weeks, the European payment order for debtors in other EU countries, and enforcement on French soil through a commissaire de justice. Every rule below is tied to its exact article in the French codes, quoted from the official texts, so you can brief your accountant, instruct a lawyer precisely, and never pay for a step you do not need.

I. Your French invoice is unpaid: how do you turn a late payment into a documented claim that earns interest?

French recovery law rewards creditors who write things down early and punishes those who wait on the telephone. Before any judge enters the picture, two moves decide the value of your file: sending a demand in the form the Civil Code recognises, and assembling the paper trail that proves the debt is certain, fixed in amount and due. Interest, penalties and the flat recovery fee all start from these papers, and the court procedure examined in Part II is only open to creditors whose claim meets exactly those three tests. If you live abroad, this first stage is also the cheapest to handle remotely: letters, emails with proof of delivery and your own accounting records cost almost nothing and can be prepared from your desk. The discipline pays twice, because a debtor who receives a formally correct demand letter with quantified penalties often pays without any court step at all.

A. How do you send a French formal demand that starts interest running and unlocks statutory penalties?

The starting point is the mise en demeure, the formal demand for payment that French law treats as the trigger for default interest. 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” (Article 1344, Civil Code, Légifrance). In plain English, your customer is formally put on notice either by a writ or any document carrying a sufficient demand to pay, or automatically when the obligation falls due if your contract says so. A sommation is a formal demand served by a commissaire de justice (the enforcement officer, formerly called huissier de justice, who serves court papers and enforces judgments), while an acte portant interpellation suffisante covers any written document that clearly demands payment of a specified sum, such as a registered letter with acknowledgment of receipt (lettre recommandée avec accusé de réception) stating the invoice number, the amount and a deadline. From abroad, the registered letter with acknowledgment of receipt is the practical tool: send it in French, quote the invoice references, set a payment deadline of eight to fifteen days, and keep the receipt slips.

The reason this letter matters is that default interest runs from it by operation of law. Article 1231-6 of the Civil Code provides: “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” (Article 1231-6, Civil Code, Légifrance). The same article adds that “Ces dommages et intérêts sont dus sans que le créancier soit tenu de justifier d’aucune perte” (Article 1231-6, Civil Code, Légifrance). Read those two sentences as a foreign founder should: once your formal demand is delivered, the legal interest rate (taux d’intérêt légal, a rate fixed by decree twice a year and published in the Journal officiel) starts accruing on the principal automatically, and you do not have to prove any loss to claim it. If the debtor’s delay was also in bad faith and caused you a separate harm beyond the mere wait, the article preserves a further claim, since a creditor “auquel son débiteur en retard a causé, par sa mauvaise foi, un préjudice indépendant de ce retard, peut obtenir des dommages et intérêts distincts de l’intérêt moratoire”. Keep the proof of delivery of your demand letter forever: it is the document from which every euro of interest is calculated.

Between businesses, French law adds a second and heavier layer on top of legal interest: commercial late penalties that apply even if your contract says nothing. Article L. 441-10 of the Commercial Code sets the payment ceilings first: unless otherwise agreed, thirty days after receipt of the goods or performance of the service, and a negotiated period that “ne peut dépasser soixante jours après la date d’émission de la facture”, with a possible forty-five days end-of-month-that must be expressly stipulated and must not be a manifest abuse toward the creditor (Article L. 441-10, Commercial Code, Légifrance). Any clause that stretches payment beyond these ceilings is unenforceable, which means a French customer cannot hide behind ninety-day terms printed on its own purchase order if you never accepted them. Your demand letter should therefore state the contractual or statutory due date explicitly and show that it has passed.

Once that date has passed, the penalties run without any reminder. Article L. 441-10 continues: “Les pénalités de retard sont exigibles sans qu’un rappel soit nécessaire” (Article L. 441-10, Commercial Code, Légifrance). The default rate, unless your terms provide otherwise within the legal floor, is “égal au taux d’intérêt appliqué par la Banque centrale européenne à son opération de refinancement la plus récente majoré de 10 points de pourcentage”, and no clause may fix a rate “inférieur à trois fois le taux d’intérêt légal” (Article L. 441-10, Commercial Code, Légifrance). In English: the European Central Bank refinancing rate plus ten points, with a minimum of three times the French legal interest rate. On top of that, “Tout professionnel en situation de retard de paiement est de plein droit débiteur, à l’égard du créancier, d’une indemnité forfaitaire pour frais de recouvrement, dont le montant est fixé par décret” (Article L. 441-10, Commercial Code, Légifrance). The decree amount is fixed by Article D. 441-5 of the same code: “Le montant de l’indemnité forfaitaire pour frais de recouvrement prévue au II de l’article L. 441-10 est fixé à 40 euros” (Article D. 441-5, Commercial Code, Légifrance). Every B2B demand letter should therefore claim three lines: the principal, the ECB-plus-ten penalties from the day after the due date, and the 40 euro flat recovery fee, plus any documented collection costs above that amount on proof. Foreign founders routinely leave this money on the table because their home-country templates omit it; French law grants it automatically, so invoice it.

A practical template for the letter, in French with an English courtesy translation attached, runs as follows: identify your company with its SIREN number (the nine-digit business identifier issued at registration and shown on the Kbis, the official company identity extract delivered by the greffe, the clerk’s office of the commercial court), identify the debtor the same way, list each unpaid invoice with date, number, amount including VAT (TVA, taxe sur la valeur ajoutée) and due date, compute penalties and the 40 euro fee per invoice, demand payment within fifteen days to your French IBAN, and state that enforcement proceedings will follow. Send it by registered letter with acknowledgment of receipt through the online service of La Poste, which works from abroad with a scanned signature, and simultaneously by email for speed while keeping the registered letter as the legally decisive copy. If the customer replies with a dispute about quality or delivery, do not ignore it: an unanswered complaint later becomes the debtor’s opposition argument, while a prompt written rebuttal with attached proof neutralises it. File every exchange chronologically, because the judge of Part II decides on papers alone.

B. What evidence file proves a French commercial debt is certain, fixed and due?

The fast court procedure of Part II is only available for claims that are certain in principle, fixed in amount and due for payment, and the judge checks those three qualities on documents, without hearing anyone. Your job at this stage is to build a file where each quality is proved by at least one paper. Certainty comes from the contract: signed quotation, purchase order, framework agreement, general terms countersigned by the customer, or at minimum a consistent chain of emails showing offer and acceptance with price. A fixed amount comes from the invoices themselves, each numbered, dated and matching the contract price, plus any amendment or credit note that adjusts the total. Due date comes from the payment term on the invoice read against Article L. 441-10, supported by proof that the goods were delivered or the service performed: delivery slips signed by the customer, timesheets, acceptance reports (procès-verbaux de réception), login or usage logs for digital services, and transport documents. For services performed remotely from abroad, keep the export of the project tool, the email handing over the deliverable, and any message in which the customer thanks you or asks for the next step: French judges treat use of the deliverable as acceptance of the corresponding invoice.

Four supporting documents complete the file and foreign owners often forget them. First, the relevé de compte client, the aged customer ledger extracted from your accounting software showing all invoices, payments and the outstanding balance, which lets the judge see at a glance that partial payments were credited and that the claimed balance is net. Second, the full correspondence history, including your reminders and the formal demand with its delivery proof, which shows good faith and fixes the starting point of interest. Third, your own company documents: a recent Kbis extract (less than three months old, downloadable online from the INPI one-stop shop, the guichet unique run by the Institut national de la propriété industrielle, which replaced the old greffe filing counters for most formalities) proving your company exists and who represents it, and the debtor’s Kbis or SIREN record proving its legal identity and registered office (siège social). Fourth, your bank details (RIB, relevé d’identité bancaire) so the order can direct payment correctly. If your invoices are now electronic, remember that France is moving to compulsory e-invoicing (facturation électronique) with structured formats and certified platforms (plateformes de dématérialisation partenaires); keep the platform transmission reports as additional proof that the invoice reached the customer in due form.

Two preliminary checks save a wasted application. Verify that the debtor company still exists and is not already in insolvency proceedings: search the BODACC (Bulletin officiel des annonces civiles et commerciales, the official gazette where openings of safeguard, receivership and liquidation proceedings are published) and the company record before spending money, because an injonction de payer against a company in redressement judiciaire or liquidation judiciaire will be declared inadmissible and your claim must instead be lodged with the insolvency practitioner (mandataire judiciaire) within the statutory deadline. Verify also the limitation period: the standard five-year period of Article 2224 of the Civil Code runs from the day the obligation became due, and commercial claims between merchants follow the same five-year rule, so an invoice that is already four years old must be pursued immediately while a recent one gives you room to negotiate first. If the debtor has changed registered office, check the new address on the company record, because the court with jurisdiction and the validity of service both depend on where the debtor actually sits, as Part II explains.

If the debtor is a consumer rather than a business, adjust the file rather than abandoning it. The commercial penalties of Article L. 441-10 do not apply to consumers, legal interest under Article 1231-6 still runs from the formal demand, and jurisdiction shifts toward the consumer’s home court with protective rules on unfair terms. Most foreign founders selling into France deal business-to-business, which is the focus of this guide, but the documentary discipline is identical: contract, proof of performance, invoice, reminders, formal demand. Founders who set up their French company, bank account and registration documents methodically from day one, as described in our guide to setting up a company in France as a foreign founder: bank account, Kbis, VAT and first hire, already hold half of this file without extra work, because the Kbis, the bank account and the VAT number are the same documents every procedure asks for.

II. Your file is ready and you live abroad: how do you get an enforceable order and seize payment in France?

France offers creditors a procedure tailor-made for unpaid invoices: the injonction de payer, an order-to-pay issued by a judge on your written application alone, without a hearing and without notifying the debtor first. If the debtor stays silent, the order becomes enforceable and you seize; if the debtor objects, the case simply continues as an ordinary lawsuit in which your documented file usually prevails. For cross-border situations inside the European Union, a parallel European procedure leads to an order enforceable in the debtor’s country. Neither path requires you to live in France or even to attend: a French lawyer or an authorised representative files the papers, the greffe (the court clerk’s office) processes them, and a commissaire de justice serves and enforces. The paragraphs below walk through the national procedure first, then the European variant and enforcement, with the Paris and Île-de-France specifics a foreign creditor needs, since debtors cluster in the capital region.

A. How does the French injonction de payer turn invoices into an enforceable order without a hearing?

Eligibility is defined by Article 1405 of the Code of Civil Procedure, and its wording is worth reading in full because it draws the boundary of the whole procedure: “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 ; en matière contractuelle, la détermination est faite en vertu des stipulations du contrat y compris, le cas échéant, la clause pénale ; 2° L’engagement résulte de l’acceptation ou du tirage d’une lettre de change, de la souscription d’un billet à ordre, de l’endossement ou de l’aval de l’un ou l’autre de ces titres ou de l’acceptation de la cession de créances conformément à la loi n° 81-1 du 2 janvier 1981 facilitant le crédit aux entreprises” (Article 1405, Code of Civil Procedure, Légifrance). In practice, nearly every unpaid B2B invoice qualifies under the first branch: a contractual claim for a determined amount, fixed by the contract terms including any penalty clause. Tort claims, disputed damages to be assessed by a judge, and claims whose amount still needs expert appraisal do not qualify and must go through ordinary proceedings. Your Part I file exists precisely to show the judge, at a glance, that the claim sits inside this article.

Jurisdiction follows the debtor, not the creditor, and no contract clause can change that. Article 1406 provides that the application goes, depending on the nature of the claim, to the protection-litigation judge (juge des contentieux de la protection) or to the president of the judicial court (tribunal judiciaire) or the commercial court (tribunal de commerce), within each court’s subject-matter jurisdiction, and then fixes the territorial rule: “Le juge territorialement compétent est celui du lieu où demeure le ou l’un des débiteurs poursuivis” (Article 1406, Code of Civil Procedure, Légifrance). The same article makes these rules a matter of public policy: “Les règles prescrites aux alinéas précédents sont d’ordre public. Toute clause contraire est réputée non écrite” (Article 1406, Code of Civil Procedure, Légifrance). For a foreign founder this has two consequences. First, sue where the French debtor sits: a Paris-based customer means the Paris courts, a Lyon customer means Lyon, even if your own company is registered elsewhere or you live on another continent. Second, ignore any jurisdiction clause the debtor printed on its purchase order purporting to send disputes to another forum for this procedure: it is deemed unwritten. As between commercial parties, the commercial court (tribunal de commerce, the court staffed by elected business judges that hears disputes between merchants) is the natural forum; the official service-public guidance and the Paris Île-de-France chamber of commerce (CCI Paris Île-de-France) factsheets describe the same filing path for businesses. In Paris, that means the tribunal de commerce de Paris, whose greffe handles a large volume of foreign-creditor applications and works entirely from the written file.

The application itself (requête) is filed or sent to the greffe with the supporting documents, using the official form for claims within the court’s jurisdiction, and it must identify the parties, state the amount claimed with its breakdown of principal, interest, penalties and fees, and explain the basis of the claim. Representation by a lawyer (avocat) is not compulsory for the application itself, but a foreign creditor who does not read French procedural documents should instruct one: the file must be in French, the breakdown must match the exhibits exactly, and a sloppy amount is the most common reason judges reject or trim applications. If the judge accepts, the court issues the payment order (ordonnance portant injonction de payer), and Article 1410 organises the paperwork: “L’ordonnance portant injonction de payer et la requête sont conservées à titre de minute au greffe. En cas d’acceptation de la requête, le greffe remet au requérant une copie certifiée conforme de la requête et de l’ordonnance revêtue de la formule exécutoire et lui restitue les documents produits” (Article 1410, Code of Civil Procedure, Légifrance). You, the creditor, must then have the order served on the debtor by a commissaire de justice within six months of its date: without this service (signification), the order lapses and produces no effect.

Service starts the debtor’s one-month clock to object. Article 1416 states the rule plainly: “L’opposition est formée dans le mois qui suit la signification de l’ordonnance” (Article 1416, Code of Civil Procedure, Légifrance). The same article extends the deadline where service was not made personally on the debtor, keeping opposition available until one month after the first document served personally or, failing that, the first enforcement measure rendering the debtor’s assets. During the opposition period, Article 1422 freezes enforcement: “Quelles que soient les modalités de la signification, le délai d’opposition prévu au premier alinéa de l’article 1416 est suspensif d’exécution. L’opposition formée dans ce délai est également suspensive” (Article 1422, Code of Civil Procedure, Légifrance). Do not instruct enforcement during that window: the suspension is automatic and any premature seizure would be set aside with costs against you.

If no opposition arrives, patience converts the paper into a full judgment equivalent. Article 1422 continues: the order becomes an enforceable title and produces the effects of a court decision once the suspensive causes have expired and two months have passed since service, at which point “Elle produit alors tous les effets d’un jugement contradictoire. Elle n’est pas susceptible d’appel même si elle accorde des délais de paiement” (Article 1422, Code of Civil Procedure, Légifrance). Concretely, about three months after service (one month of opposition time plus the two-month consolidation period), your creditor holds a title equivalent to a judgment given after adversarial debate, which the debtor cannot appeal. If opposition is filed instead, there is no drama: the case is sent to the competent court for an ordinary hearing, the debtor must state its defence, and your Part I file, already organised, becomes your trial bundle. Debtors who object purely to gain time often fail to appear or to substantiate any defence, and the court then rules on the merits. Either way, the injonction de payer costs a fraction of full proceedings: court fees are minimal, the lawyer’s work is bounded, and the commissaire de justice service fee follows the regulated tariff.

B. Your debtor sits in another EU country or hides assets: how do you use the European order and enforce in France?

When the debtor is established in another European Union member state, French domestic procedure is not your only route. Article 1424-1 of the Code of Civil Procedure points to the European track: “La présente section est relative à la procédure européenne d’injonction de payer prévue par le règlement (CE) n° 1896/2006 du Parlement européen et du Conseil du 12 décembre 2006 instituant une procédure européenne d’injonction de payer” (Article 1424-1, Code of Civil Procedure, Légifrance). The European payment order covers uncontested cross-border monetary claims in civil and commercial matters: you apply on the standard EU form to the competent French court, the court issues the order, and once it becomes enforceable it moves into the debtor’s member state without any declaration of enforceability (exequatur). The official service-public English-language pages describe this European recovery path step by step for creditors, alongside the domestic one, and they remain the most reliable practical checklist for forms, language regimes and service rules. Choose the European order when your French company is owed money by a customer in Germany, Spain, Italy or any other participating state; stay with the domestic injonction de payer when the debtor sits in France, since the national judge knows the file best, and use ordinary international enforcement channels with legal advice when the debtor sits outside the EU, where neither procedure runs directly.

Once you hold an enforceable title, French or European, enforcement happens where the assets are, through the commissaire de justice. This officer alone is empowered to serve the enforceable order with a command to pay (commandement de payer) and then to seize: attachment of bank balances (saisie-attribution) served on the debtor’s French bank, which makes the amount owed unavailable within the available balance; seizure of tangible business assets; and attachment of debts owed to the debtor by third parties. Bank attachment is the workhorse for B2B claims: served electronically on the bank’s enforcement department, it obliges the bank to freeze and then pay over the funds, and debtors who ignored every letter frequently pay within days of discovering the immobilised account. Enforcement measures require an enforceable title, respect the suspensive periods of Article 1422, and follow strictly regulated forms and time limits, which is why the commissaire de justice pilots this stage rather than the creditor directly. Fees follow the national regulated tariff with results-based supplements, and the debtor ultimately bears most enforcement costs in addition to the debt, interest, penalties and the 40 euro fee.

For Paris and Île-de-France debtors, three local specifics deserve attention. First, the tribunal de commerce de Paris and the Paris judicial court absorb an enormous volume of applications, so file a clean, fully translated and exactly totalled bundle: Paris greffes reject inconsistent amounts faster than smaller courts because they see so many. Second, many debtors domiciled in the region bank with the major French networks whose enforcement departments sit in Paris, which makes bank attachment technically smooth once the title is ready; your commissaire de justice needs the debtor’s bank details, ideally from a previous payment or from the contract’s RIB clause, because attachment requires identifying the bank holding the account. Third, if the debtor operates premises in Paris under a commercial lease (bail commercial), tangible seizure at the premises is possible but should be weighed against the debtor’s likely insolvency: seizing goods from a company about to file for protection wastes fees, while a quick bank attachment on a trading company with cash flow recovers the claim. A short solvency check through the company record and the BODACC, repeated just before enforcement, remains the best money a foreign creditor spends in the whole procedure.

Costs and timing, honestly stated, look like this. The formal demand stage costs postage and your time plus any lawyer review you choose. The injonction de payer application involves modest court costs, the lawyer’s fixed fee for drafting the file, and the service fee of roughly a few dozen to a little over a hundred euros depending on the steps; the order typically issues within weeks of filing in uncontested commercial matters, service follows within days, and enforceability consolidates about three months after service absent opposition. Opposition adds the cost and timeline of an ordinary court case, usually many months, but your documented file keeps the additional work bounded. The European order follows similar economics with translation costs added. Against these sums, set the automatic additions your file already carries: ECB-plus-ten penalties from the day after the due date, legal interest from the formal demand, the 40 euro flat fee per invoice, and enforcement costs shifted to the debtor. Foreign founders who quantify these additions in the demand letter often discover that the debtor’s cheapest option is to pay immediately, which is exactly the settlement dynamic the legislator intended.

Conclusion

An unpaid French invoice is not a loss to write off from abroad; it is a claim that French law equips you to collect in a defined order. Send the formal demand that Article 1344 recognises and let Article 1231-6 start legal interest without proof of loss. Add the commercial penalties that Article L. 441-10 makes due without any reminder and the 40 euro fee of Article D. 441-5 to every B2B invoice. Build the file that proves a contractual claim for a determined amount, because Article 1405 opens the fast procedure only to such claims. File the injonction de payer where the debtor sits under the public-policy rule of Article 1406, serve through a commissaire de justice, respect the one-month opposition period of Article 1416 and the suspensive effect of Article 1422, and collect on a title that carries all the effects of a contested judgment. Reach for the European order of Article 1424-1 when the debtor sits in another member state, and enforce against French bank accounts where the money is. None of these steps requires living in France, but each rewards method: French-language papers, exact totals, delivery proofs kept from the first reminder, and a solvency check before spending on enforcement. Handled in that order, distance stops being a weakness and the procedure does the travelling for you.