Your French customer has received the goods, your team has performed the service, and the invoice has been sitting unpaid for two months. You live in London, New York, Dubai or Singapore, your French company is a SAS (société par actions simplifiée, the flexible French corporation most foreign founders choose), and you cannot fly to Paris for a 9,000 euro invoice. This is one of the most common emergencies foreign founders bring to a French business lawyer, and French law answers it better than most newcomers expect: late-payment penalties run automatically, a fixed recovery fee applies without proof of loss, and a fast paper procedure called the injonction de payer (order to pay) lets you obtain an enforceable court order without an initial hearing. This article explains, step by step, what your debtor owes you once the payment date passes, what your invoice and your file must prove, how to send a formal notice that starts interest running, and how to get the order enforced in Paris through a commissaire de justice (the court enforcement officer, formerly called huissier de justice) while you stay abroad. If you are still setting up your French presence, read first our complete guide to setting up a company in France as a foreign founder: bank account, Kbis, VAT and your first hire, then use this article when a client stops paying.

I. What your French debtor owes you once the invoice is late

French business-to-business payment law is protective of the creditor by design. The Commercial Code sets maximum payment periods that apply even if your contract says nothing, it makes penalties accrue by operation of law from the day after the due date, and the Court of Cassation (Cour de cassation, France’s supreme court for civil and commercial matters) has confirmed that these penalties apply broadly between professionals. The three building blocks below decide how much you can claim: the payment deadline, the penalty rate, and the fixed recovery indemnity.

A. How to calculate late penalties, the ECB rate and the 40-euro recovery fee

Start with the deadline. Unless your sales conditions or a specific agreement say otherwise, the settlement period cannot exceed thirty days after the date the goods were received or the service performed, and any agreed period you negotiate with the customer cannot exceed sixty days after the invoice date, as article L. 441-10, I of the Commercial Code provides in these terms: “Le délai convenu entre les parties pour régler les sommes dues ne peut dépasser soixante jours après la date d’émission de la facture.” A longer period of up to forty-five days end of month can be agreed, but only if it is expressly stipulated in the contract and does not constitute a manifest abuse towards the creditor, under the same article L. 441-10, I of the Commercial Code. For periodic invoices within the meaning of tax law, the agreed period cannot exceed forty-five days after the invoice date, again under the same article L. 441-10, I of the Commercial Code. Any clause that purports to give your customer ninety or one hundred and twenty days as standard practice is therefore unenforceable against you, and the statutory ceiling replaces it. The practical summary published by the French administration on payment periods between professionals confirms the same ceilings and the automatic nature of the penalties (see service-public.fr: payment periods between professionals and late penalties).

Once the date shown on the invoice passes without full payment, two financial consequences attach automatically. First, late penalties accrue from the day after the settlement date shown on the invoice, at a rate equal to the interest rate applied by the European Central Bank (ECB) to its most recent refinancing operation plus ten percentage points, as article L. 441-10, II of the Commercial Code states: “ce taux est 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.” The same paragraph adds that the rate applicable during 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, under the same article L. 441-10, II of the Commercial Code. Your contract may set a different rate, but it can never set a rate below three times the French legal interest rate, under the same article L. 441-10, II of the Commercial Code. In practice, with an ECB refinancing rate of, say, 2.00 percent, your penalty rate would be 12.00 percent per year, running day by day on the unpaid amount including VAT, from the day after the due date until actual payment. On a 20,000 euro invoice paid ninety days late, that represents roughly 590 euros of penalties, calculated as 20,000 × 12% × 90/365, without any reminder letter being required.

That last point is the one foreign creditors most often miss: no reminder is needed. The statute says it expressly: “Les pénalités de retard sont exigibles sans qu’un rappel soit nécessaire”, under article L. 441-10, II of the Commercial Code. The Court of Cassation has repeated the formula in identical words, holding that “Les pénalités de retard prévues par ce texte, qui sont dues de plein droit, sans rappel et sans avoir à être mentionnées dans le contrat”, in Cass. com., 21 October 2020, No. 18-25.749. The same decision adds that these penalties apply, under the first paragraph of the text, to relations between “tout producteur, prestataire de services, grossiste ou importateur” on one side and “tout acheteur de produits ou tout demandeur de prestations de services qui contracte pour son activité professionnelle” on the other, in Cass. com., 21 October 2020, No. 18-25.749. The consequence is direct for your situation: even if your customer is not a merchant — the case concerned a property company (SCI, société civile immobilière) that denied being a trader — the penalties still apply as long as it contracted for its professional activity, as the Court held when it quashed the Paris Court of Appeal for requiring proof that the debtor was a commerçant, in Cass. com., 21 October 2020, No. 18-25.749. If your French customer ordered goods or services for its business, the penalty regime covers your invoice whether the customer is a SAS, a SARL (société à responsabilité limitée, the French limited liability company), a SCI or a foreign company operating in France.

Second, every professional in late payment owes the creditor, by operation of law, a fixed indemnity for recovery costs, whose amount is set by decree, under article L. 441-10, II of the Commercial Code. That decree fixes the amount plainly: “Le montant de l’indemnité forfaitaire pour frais de recouvrement prévue au II de l’article L. 441-10 est fixé à 40 euros”, under article D. 441-5 of the Commercial Code. You therefore add 40 euros per unpaid invoice automatically, without proving any collection cost. Where your actual recovery costs exceed that fixed amount — lawyer’s letter, enforcement officer’s fees, translation costs from abroad — you can claim additional compensation on proof, as article L. 441-10, II of the Commercial Code expressly allows. One reservation matters: these indemnities cannot be invoked where the opening of safeguard, receivership or liquidation proceedings (procédure de sauvegarde, de redressement ou de liquidation judiciaire) prohibits payment of the debt at its due date, under the same article L. 441-10, II of the Commercial Code. So your first reflex on learning that the debtor has entered collective proceedings is to declare your claim to the appointed insolvency practitioner instead of counting penalties that will not run during the freeze.

A final timing warning protects the whole calculation. Claims arising from business dealings between traders, or between traders and non-traders, are subject to a five-year limitation period unless a shorter special period applies, because “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”, under article L. 110-4, I of the Commercial Code. Five years sounds comfortable, but interest, penalties and stale paperwork fade in value long before that, and a debtor in difficulty may disappear or enter proceedings in the meantime. Treat thirty days of silence after the due date as the moment to act, not as the moment to wait.

B. What your invoice and your file must prove before you claim a single euro

Penalties that run by operation of law still need a file that proves the debt. French judges decide debt-recovery cases on documents, and the injonction de payer procedure described below is won or lost on the papers attached to the petition. Build the file before you write the demand letter, because every gap you leave becomes an argument for the debtor.

The invoice itself must carry a series of mandatory statements. Every purchase of products or professional service must be invoiced, and the seller must issue the invoice upon delivery or performance while the buyer must claim it, under article L. 441-9, I of the Commercial Code. The invoice must state the names and addresses of the parties, the date of the sale or service, quantity, precise description, unit price excluding VAT, any price reduction acquired at that date, the date by which payment must be made — “La facture mentionne la date à laquelle le règlement doit intervenir” — the discount conditions for early payment, the penalty rate applicable from the day after the settlement date, and the amount of the fixed recovery indemnity due in case of late payment, all under article L. 441-9, I of the Commercial Code. Payment is deemed made on the date the funds are placed at the disposal of the beneficiary or its subrogee, under the same article L. 441-9, I of the Commercial Code. Breach of these invoicing duties exposes the offender to an administrative fine of up to 75,000 euros for an individual and 375,000 euros for a company, doubled in case of repetition within two years after the first penalty became final, under article L. 441-9, II of the Commercial Code. The Court of Cassation has drawn the practical consequence for penalty clauses: the settlement conditions “doivent obligatoirement préciser les conditions d’application et le taux d’intérêt des pénalités de retard exigibles le jour suivant la date de règlement figurant sur la facture dans le cas où les sommes dues sont réglées après cette date”, in Cass. 1st civ., 5 February 2020, No. 18-18.854. Check your template today: if the penalty rate and the 40-euro indemnity do not appear on the invoice, add them now, because the statutory penalties still run but a compliant invoice removes the debtor’s easiest defence and keeps the DGCCRF (Direction générale de la concurrence, de la consommation et de la répression des fraudes, the French competition and consumer enforcement authority) away from your own file.

Beyond the invoice, assemble the proof that the customer ordered, received and accepted the goods or services: signed quote or purchase order (bon de commande), framework contract or general terms (CGV, conditions générales de vente) with proof of acceptance, delivery slips signed at reception, timesheets or acceptance reports for services, email exchanges acknowledging receipt or discussing the invoice without disputing it, and your complete statement of account. For services, keep the evidence that the deliverable was used or went into production without complaint: a customer that operated your software for three months before alleging non-conformity will struggle to explain why it never protested. If your general terms provide for an acceptance or verification procedure, keep its duration consistent with commercial good practice and in any event within thirty days of receipt, because the statute caps such procedures and forbids using them to shift the starting point of the maximum payment period, under article L. 441-10, III of the Commercial Code. A debtor that imposes a sixty-day internal validation circuit before any invoice becomes payable is doing exactly what this paragraph prohibits.

Two exclusions deserve a deliberate check before you claim. First, the penalty regime of the Commercial Code applies between persons acting for their professional activity; the Court of Cassation quashed a decision that had applied penalties without investigating whether an association, given its activity, might have the status of a non-professional excluding the disputed penalties, in Cass. 1st civ., 5 February 2020, No. 18-18.854. If your debtor is a consumer, an association acting outside any professional activity, or a public body, different rules apply and this article’s calculation does not transfer as such. Second, where the debtor company belongs to a group, verify which legal entity ordered and received the performance: the invoice must target the exact debtor entity shown on its Kbis (the Kbis extract is the official identity card of a French company, issued by the greffe, the registry of the commercial court), because an order against the wrong group company is unenforceable and restarts the whole timetable.

II. How to force payment from abroad without flying to France

With the calculation and the file in place, the question becomes operational: how do you convert paper into money when you live six time zones away? French procedure offers a deliberately simple answer for undisputed contractual debts of a fixed amount, followed by enforcement tools that your lawyer and the commissaire de justice operate on the ground while you sign and decide from abroad.

A. How to send a formal notice that starts interest running and when to file an injonction de payer

Send a written formal notice (mise en demeure) before anything else, even though penalties already run. The notice serves three functions: it demonstrates good faith, it starts the clock for certain heads of interest and damages, and it is the document the judge reads first. A debtor is put on formal notice to pay either by a summons or an act containing sufficient demand, or, where the contract so provides, by the mere enforceability of the obligation, because “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”, under article 1344 of the Civil Code. For ordinary civil interest, the rule is that damages for late payment of a sum of money consist of interest at the legal rate running from the formal notice, owed without the creditor having to prove any loss, under article 1231-6 of the Civil Code. Your notice should therefore identify each unpaid invoice by number, date, amount and due date, compute penalties and the 40-euro indemnity per invoice, set a firm payment deadline of eight to fifteen days, state the court action you will file failing payment, and travel by a provable channel: registered letter with acknowledgement of receipt, or service by commissaire de justice for larger amounts. Keep the tone factual and keep a copy of everything, because the notice and its proof of receipt join the petition file.

If the notice goes unanswered and the debt is a contractual claim for a fixed amount — your case exactly — recovery can be sought through the injonction de payer procedure where “La créance a une cause contractuelle ou résulte d’une obligation de caractère statutaire et s’élève à un montant déterminé”, under article 1405 of the Code of Civil Procedure. The petition is brought, depending on the case, before the protection disputes judge or the president of the judicial court or the commercial court, within their subject-matter jurisdiction, and the territorially competent judge is the judge of the place where the debtor, or one of the debtors pursued, resides, under article 1406 of the Code of Civil Procedure. These jurisdictional rules are a matter of public policy, any contrary clause is deemed unwritten, and the judge must raise lack of jurisdiction of its own motion, under the same article 1406 of the Code of Civil Procedure. In plain terms: for a commercial invoice, you petition the president of the commercial court of the debtor’s domicile — for a Paris debtor, the Tribunal des activités économiques de Paris — and you cannot contractually move that jurisdiction elsewhere. Your lawyer files the request with the invoices, the contract and order documents, the delivery proofs, the statement of account and the unanswered formal notice; the judge rules on the papers without summoning the debtor first, which is precisely what makes the procedure fast and inexpensive.

Two follow-on rules decide what happens next, and both have been tested before the Court of Cassation within the last few years. Where the petition is granted, the order and the petition are kept as the original at the registry, and the registry hands the applicant a certified copy of the petition and the order bearing the enforcement formula and returns the supporting documents, under article 1410 of the Code of Civil Procedure. The order must then be served on the debtor, and the debtor has one month from service to file opposition; however, where service was not made on the person, opposition remains admissible until one month after the first act served on the person or, failing that, after the first enforcement measure that freezes all or part of the debtor’s assets, because “L’opposition est formée dans le mois qui suit la signification de l’ordonnance”, with the stated extension for non-personal service, under article 1416 of the Code of Civil Procedure. If no opposition is filed within that period, the order becomes enforceable and the creditor recovers through the enforcement officer. If opposition is filed, the case converts into ordinary adversarial proceedings, and the rule affirmed by the Second Civil Chamber is that “Aux termes de ce texte, le jugement du tribunal se substitue à l’ordonnance portant injonction de payer”, so that “l’ordonnance portant injonction de payer, qui n’est une décision qu’en l’absence d’opposition, ne pouvait reprendre ses effets”, in Cass. 2nd civ., 11 September 2025, No. 24-14.766, applying article 1420 of the Code of Civil Procedure, whose text is simply: “Le jugement du tribunal se substitue à l’ordonnance portant injonction de payer.” Concretely, an opponent cannot ask the court to rubber-stamp the old order: the tribunal re-examines the whole claim, which is why your initial file must already be trial-ready.

For larger or disputed debts, or where you hold a cheque, a promissory note or an acknowledged assignment of receivables, the same article 1405 of the Code of Civil Procedure extends the procedure to those instruments, and your lawyer will choose between the order-to-pay route, a fast-track référé claim for an undisputed debt, or a full writ of summons (assignation) where the debtor raises a substantive defence such as defective performance. The choice depends on the size of the claim, the quality of your documents and the signals the debtor sends after the formal notice — silence points to the order, a detailed technical dispute points to a full hearing.

B. How to get the order enforced in Paris: court, enforcement officer and the file to prepare

Paris concentrates both the competent courts and the enforcement professionals, which simplifies life for a creditor living abroad. If your debtor is domiciled in Paris or the inner suburbs, the petition goes to the Tribunal des activités économiques de Paris (the Paris business court, which replaced the former Tribunal de commerce de Paris for commercial disputes), because the territorially competent judge is the judge of the debtor’s domicile and that rule is mandatory, under article 1406 of the Code of Civil Procedure. The Île-de-France specifics that matter in practice are the following: file in the jurisdiction of the debtor’s registered office as shown on its Kbis rather than the address of the Paris office where your contact sat, because service at the wrong address produces the extended opposition period and months of delay; instruct a Paris-based commissaire de justice early, since this officer serves the order, reports on the debtor’s apparent solvency, and later carries out seizures of bank accounts (saisie-attribution) or tangible assets once the order is enforceable; and keep every document in French or with a certified translation ready, because the petition, the invoices and the general terms examined by the Paris judge must be immediately readable. None of these steps requires your presence: your lawyer signs and files the petition under a power of attorney, receives the order from the greffe, transmits it to the commissaire de justice for service, and reports to you by email and video call at each stage.

Prepare the enforcement file as a single bundle, in this order: the Kbis of your own French company proving your capacity to sue, the debtor’s Kbis obtained from the greffe or the INPI (Institut national de la propriété industrielle, the French body that now centralises company registry data) portal showing its exact corporate name and registered office, the complete contract chain with accepted general terms, each invoice with its proof of sending, delivery and acceptance evidence, the statement of account reconciling invoices, payments and credit notes, the formal notice with proof of receipt, and a one-page calculation sheet showing principal, penalty rate per half-year with the ECB reference, number of days of delay per invoice, and the 40-euro indemnity per invoice. Where the debtor has paid part of the debt, apply partial payments to the oldest invoice first in your schedule and keep the allocation transparent, because an opaque account invites the very opposition you want to avoid.

Money that cannot be recovered from an insolvent debtor should not consume good money. Before filing, ask your lawyer for a solvency check: BODACC (Bulletin officiel des annonces civiles et commerciales, the official gazette publishing insolvency openings, sales of businesses and similar notices) search for safeguard, receivership or liquidation proceedings, signs of a disappearing debtor such as a recently moved registered office with no activity, and the age and amount of the debt measured against the five-year business limitation period, since “Les obligations nées à l’occasion de leur commerce entre commerçants ou entre commerçants et non-commerçants se prescrivent par cinq ans”, under article L. 110-4, I of the Commercial Code. Where collective proceedings are already open, file a declaration of your claim with the designated practitioner within the published deadline instead of launching an individual enforcement action, and treat penalties accruing after the opening judgment as excluded from the claim, under article L. 441-10, II of the Commercial Code. Where the debtor is solvent but silent, move fast: bank-account seizures succeed on accounts that are still funded, while a debtor warned by months of hesitant correspondence empties them.

Conclusion

An unpaid French invoice is not a cultural fatality but a documented claim carrying automatic penalties, a fixed recovery fee and a streamlined court procedure designed for exactly this situation. Calculate the sixty-day ceiling, the ECB-plus-ten rate per half-year and the 40 euros per invoice; verify that each invoice states the payment date, the penalty rate and the recovery indemnity; send a formal notice that identifies every invoice and sets a short final deadline; then petition the commercial court of the debtor’s domicile for an injonction de payer and have the order served and enforced by a Paris commissaire de justice while you manage the file from abroad. Opposition, where it comes, converts the case into a full hearing in which the tribunal substitutes its own judgment for the order — the reason your file must be complete from day one. Handled this way, distance stops being a weakness: the creditor that documents early, demands in writing and files on the papers recovers faster than the creditor that waits for a commercial gesture that never comes.