You invoice a French client from your French company, the due date passes, then thirty days, then sixty, and nobody answers your reminders. You live in London, New York, Dubai or Singapore, you cannot walk into the client’s office, and you wonder whether a small unpaid invoice is worth a lawsuit in a country where you do not live. The short answer is that French law gives a foreign-run company the same collection tools as a local one, and that the fastest of them, the injonction de payer (order to pay), is a paper procedure with no hearing at the start, designed exactly for fixed-sum contractual claims such as unpaid invoices. Since 1 September 2026, one deadline in that procedure has become stricter: an order that is not served within three months of its date lapses, so the calendar must be managed tightly, especially from abroad.<\/p>\n
This article explains, for a business reader who runs a French company from outside France, how to turn an unpaid French invoice into cash: what your invoice and general terms already earn you without a judge, how the formal demand letter (mise en demeure) builds your file, how the injonction de payer works step by step, what happens if the debtor objects, and how you enforce the order through a commissaire de justice (the enforcement officer, formerly called huissier de justice) without flying to France. Every French acronym is explained on first use. The legal vehicle behind your company matters for liability and tax, so if you have not yet settled that question, read our guide on how foreign founders choose between a French SAS, SARL, branch or subsidiary<\/a> before you chase the debt, because the name on the invoice determines who can sue and who gets paid.<\/p>\n French commercial law does not treat payment time as a mere courtesy. Article L. 441-10 of the Commercial Code (Code de commerce) sets the default rule: unless your sales conditions or the contract say otherwise, the payment period cannot exceed thirty days after receipt of the goods or performance of the service, and a negotiated period cannot exceed sixty days after the invoice date, with a narrowly framed option of forty-five days end of month where it is expressly agreed and not manifestly abusive to the creditor. In practice, this means your invoice should always state a payment date, because everything else \u2014 penalties, the flat recovery fee, interest \u2014 runs from that date. Your general terms of sale (conditions generales de vente), which French law treats seriously, are the foundation here: “D\u00e8s lors que les conditions g\u00e9n\u00e9rales de vente sont \u00e9tablies, elles constituent le socle unique de la n\u00e9gociation commerciale.” That sentence comes from article L. 441-1 of the Commercial Code<\/a>, and it explains why judges look at your general terms first when a debtor claims the period or the price was never agreed. Send them with every quote, print them on the back of the invoice or attach them to the order confirmation, and keep proof of that communication.<\/p>\n The most business-friendly feature of the French system is that late penalties run automatically. Article L. 441-10 of the Commercial Code<\/a> states: “Les p\u00e9nalit\u00e9s de retard sont exigibles sans qu’un rappel soit n\u00e9cessaire.” No reminder is needed; the day after the payment date shown on the invoice, penalties accrue by operation of law. The rate, unless your terms set a higher one, equals the European Central Bank refinancing rate plus ten points, and it can never be set below three times the legal interest rate (taux d’interet legal, the statutory rate published twice a year by decree). On a 20,000 euro invoice paid ninety days late, the difference between claiming this rate and claiming nothing is several hundred euros, and over a portfolio of late invoices it becomes a real line of revenue protection. Your invoice must mention the penalty rate and the due date; Article L. 441-10 requires your settlement conditions to state the applicable conditions and the rate of late penalties payable the day after the payment date shown on the invoice, plus the amount of the flat recovery fee.<\/p>\n On top of penalties, every professional debtor in late payment owes you a flat recovery fee by operation of law. The same article L. 441-10 of the Commercial Code<\/a> provides: “Tout professionnel en situation de retard de paiement est de plein droit d\u00e9biteur, \u00e0 l’\u00e9gard du cr\u00e9ancier, d’une indemnit\u00e9 forfaitaire pour frais de recouvrement, dont le montant est fix\u00e9 par d\u00e9cret.” The decree amount is set by article D. 441-5 of the Commercial Code<\/a>: “Le montant de l’indemnit\u00e9 forfaitaire pour frais de recouvrement pr\u00e9vue au II de l’article L. 441-10 est fix\u00e9 \u00e0 40 euros.” Forty euros per late invoice, automatically, plus documented additional recovery costs where your real costs exceed that flat sum, since the creditor may claim further compensation on justification. Three practical consequences follow for a company run from abroad. First, always invoice with the mandatory notices: payment date, penalty rate, and the 40-euro fee. An invoice missing these notices does not lose the penalties, but it invites disputes and slows every later step. Second, compute penalties per invoice with the ECB rate of the relevant half-year, because the rate applicable in the first half is the rate in force on 1 January and in the second half the rate in force on 1 July. Third, never write off the 40 euros as trivial: across twenty late invoices it is 800 euros of automatic entitlement, and judges apply it without discussion when asked.<\/p>\n One warning belongs here. If your debtor enters safeguard, receivership or liquidation proceedings (procedure de sauvegarde, redressement judiciaire, liquidation judiciaire), the statute blocks payment at maturity of the claim and the penalties and fee cannot be invoked for the frozen period. That is why speed matters: the creditor who acts in the first weeks of delay usually recovers under ordinary law, while the creditor who waits may discover the debtor is under court protection and the file moves to a claims declaration (declaration de creance) before a different judge. Your French company’s bank setup also matters at collection time, because the money must land somewhere you control; foreign founders who struggled with the deposit stage should review how to unblock a French corporate bank account and deposit capital from abroad<\/a> so that recovered sums do not sit in an account you cannot operate.<\/p>\n Before any petition, send a formal demand letter, the mise en demeure. French practice distinguishes the friendly reminder (relance) from the mise en demeure, which is the letter that states the exact sums claimed, the legal basis, and a final deadline, typically eight to fifteen days, and warns of court action and of penalties continuing to run. Send it by registered letter with acknowledgment of receipt (lettre recommandee avec accuse de reception) or, better for a creditor abroad, through a commissaire de justice by signification (formal service), or by the electronic registered route where the recipient accepts it. The mise en demeure does three things at once: it restarts the debtor’s attention, it fixes the starting point of default interest where your contract is silent, and it proves to the judge that you behaved as a reasonable creditor. Keep the postal receipt, the acknowledgment card or the service report (proces-verbal de signification) with the file; the injonction de payer petition later requires a schedule (bordereau) of supporting documents, and a served demand letter sits at the top of that schedule.<\/p>\n Build the rest of the file as if the judge will only ever see paper, because at the order-to-pay stage that is exactly what happens. Assemble the signed contract or accepted quote, the purchase order, the delivery slips or time sheets proving performance, every invoice with its due date and penalty notices, account statements showing non-payment, the full email thread with the debtor, and the mise en demeure with its proof of sending or service. Where the debtor is a company, pull its recent Kbis (the official company identity extract issued by the greffe, the court clerk’s office of the commercial court) to confirm its exact legal name, registered office (siege social) and the identity of its legal representative, because suing the wrong name or an old address is the most common reason petitions stall. If the debtor is an individual professional, verify the address the same way. From abroad, all of this can be done by email and through online registers; instruct your representative in France or your counsel to gather the Kbis dated within three months, since courts prefer recent extracts.<\/p>\n At this stage, check two clocks. The first is limitation (prescription): article L. 110-4 of the Commercial Code<\/a> provides that “Les obligations n\u00e9es \u00e0 l’occasion de leur commerce entre commer\u00e7ants ou entre commer\u00e7ants et non-commer\u00e7ants se prescrivent par cinq ans”, so a commercial invoice generally expires after five years, and shorter special periods can apply in regulated sectors such as transport or insurance. Do not let an old invoice sleep; a demand letter does not by itself interrupt limitation in every configuration, while a court petition does. The second clock is the debtor’s solvency signals: bounced promises, a request for exceptional delays, rumors of layoffs, a change of bank details, or a sudden dispute raised for the first time months after delivery. A dispute raised early and precisely may be genuine; a vague complaint invented after the mise en demeure is a classic delay tactic and should accelerate, not slow, your petition. Note the date, amount and author of every promise to pay, because a judge reading an opposition later will weigh that history.<\/p>\n Finally, decide the amount with interest and costs included. The petition must state the precise total with a breakdown (decompte) of each element: principal per invoice, penalties computed to the petition date with the rate identified, the 40-euro fee per late invoice, and any documented extra recovery costs. Precision here is not decoration; article 1407 of the Code of Civil Procedure<\/a> requires that “la requ\u00eate contient l’indication pr\u00e9cise du montant de la somme r\u00e9clam\u00e9e avec le d\u00e9compte des diff\u00e9rents \u00e9l\u00e9ments de la cr\u00e9ance”, and petitions with a lump sum and no breakdown are the ones judges reject or trim. Prepare a one-page schedule in euros, invoice by invoice, and attach the calculation. If your contracts are with consumers rather than professionals, stop and take advice before copying this chapter: consumer claims follow different courts and protective rules, and the penalty and fee regime described here is the business-to-business regime.<\/p>\n The injonction de payer is the workhorse of French debt collection for one reason: the judge decides on papers, without a hearing, and the order, once served and unchallenged, becomes enforceable. Article 1405 of the Code of Civil Procedure<\/a> opens the door: “Le recouvrement d’une cr\u00e9ance peut \u00eatre demand\u00e9 suivant la proc\u00e9dure d’injonction de payer lorsque : 1\u00b0 La cr\u00e9ance a une cause contractuelle ou r\u00e9sulte d’une obligation de caract\u00e8re statutaire et s’\u00e9l\u00e8ve \u00e0 un montant d\u00e9termin\u00e9”. An unpaid invoice for delivered goods or performed services is the textbook case: contractual cause, fixed amount. The second statutory case, bills of exchange and promissory notes, matters where you took payment paper. Claims that are not yet fixed, tort claims needing assessment, or claims requiring a full trial on disputed performance belong to ordinary proceedings instead; filing an order-to-pay petition on a genuinely disputed claim wastes the filing fee and teaches the debtor your strategy.<\/p>\n Jurisdiction is simple and mandatory. Article 1406 of the Code of Civil Procedure<\/a> sends the petition to the judge for protection matters (juge des contentieux de la protection) or to the president of the judicial court (tribunal judiciaire) or the commercial court (tribunal de commerce), within their subject-matter competence, and adds the territorial rule: “Le juge territorialement comp\u00e9tent est celui du lieu o\u00f9 demeure le ou l’un des d\u00e9biteurs poursuivis.” These rules are a matter of public policy (ordre public): any contrary clause is deemed unwritten and the judge must raise lack of competence on his own motion. In practice, a French company suing a French business debtor files before the commercial court of the debtor’s place of business; a debtor who is an individual may send the case to the judicial court. Your own residence abroad changes nothing to this map: competence follows the debtor, not the creditor. File in the wrong court and the petition is rejected or transferred; file in the right one with a clean breakdown and the order often issues within weeks.<\/p>\n The petition itself is filed by request (requ\u00eate) handed to or sent to the greffe by the creditor or any agent (mandataire), which is how a founder abroad acts without traveling: a French lawyer or authorized representative files for you. The request states the precise amount with the breakdown, the legal basis, and the bordereau of supporting documents, and it is accompanied by those documents. Once the judge grants the request, the greffe keeps the order and the request as the court copy (minute) and hands the creditor a certified copy bearing the enforcement formula (formule executoire). That mechanism is stated by article 1410 of the Code of Civil Procedure<\/a>, which keeps the order and the request at the greffe as the minute and provides the certified copy to the petitioner. If the judge rejects the request, the file is returned and you keep the ordinary lawsuit route; a rejection is not a judgment against you and does not bar a full claim on the merits.<\/p>\n Then comes the deadline that now decides everything. Article 1411 of the Code of Civil Procedure<\/a> provides that a certified copy of the request with the document schedule and the order bearing the enforcement formula is served on each debtor at the creditor’s initiative, and that “L’ordonnance portant injonction de payer est non avenue si elle n’a pas \u00e9t\u00e9 signifi\u00e9e dans les trois mois de sa date.” Three months from the date of the order, not from receipt, not from transmission. A lapsed order is treated as never having existed, and the whole petition must be restarted with fresh costs. For a creditor living abroad, this is the operational risk to neutralize on day one: designate the commissaire de justice for service before the order issues, confirm the debtor’s address against a fresh Kbis, and diary the three-month date the day the order arrives. Service is effected by the commissaire de justice, who also makes the supporting documents available electronically under official arrangements, and the service report proves the date. Where the debtor has moved, skip-tracing through the registers beats repeated failed attempts, because the clock does not pause while you search.<\/p>\n The debtor’s response window is equally mechanical. Article 1416 of the Code of Civil Procedure<\/a> states: “L’opposition est form\u00e9e dans le mois qui suit la signification de l’ordonnance.” One month from service. If service was not made on the person, the objection remains available until one month after the first act served on the person or, failing that, after the first enforcement measure freezing assets in whole or in part. An opposition filed in time sends the case to a full hearing on the merits, where both sides argue and the judge decides by judgment; an opposition filed late is inadmissible and the order stands. Two consequences for your management from abroad. First, do not treat silence in the month after service as payment: calendar the expiry, and on day thirty-one instruct enforcement if no opposition and no payment arrived. Second, if an opposition arrives, read it as intelligence: a reasoned opposition citing specific defects tells you the real dispute to prepare for trial, while a bare denial often settles once the debtor faces a hearing date, a judge, and the prospect of costs. Keep the VAT position of the disputed sums clean in parallel, since penalties and adjustments interact with your returns; our guide on French VAT registration, CA3 returns and reverse charge for companies run from abroad<\/a> covers the filing side while the collection runs its course.<\/p>\nI. Your French invoice is unpaid: what the law already gives you before any court step<\/h2>\n
A. How French law prices late payment: deadlines, ECB-plus-10 penalties and the 40-euro fee<\/h3>\n
B. How to build a file that wins: the formal demand and the paper trail a French judge expects<\/h3>\n
II. From the court order to the money: the injonction de payer run from abroad<\/h2>\n
A. How the order-to-pay petition works: the right judge, the file, the three-month service deadline and the one-month opposition window<\/h3>\n
B. How enforcement works without traveling: the enforcement formula, the commissaire de justice and the seizure ladder<\/h3>\n