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E-Invoicing France

B2B E-Invoices are exchanged over the Peppol-Network through a certified platform, while B2C and cross-border transactions are transmitted to the tax administration (DGFiP) via E-Reporting.

After sending the E-Invoice, it is handed off to a certified platform that validates it and delivers it to the recipient over the Peppol-Network. As soon as our system receives an updated status, it will be updated in the Portal. The EFR will however respond immediately to the register request.

info

For the regulatory mandate and rollout timeline, see the E-Invoicing System overview.

Onboarding​

Before a company can send or receive French E-Invoices, its legal representative must complete a mandatory, one-time onboarding (per SIREN). It is started via a secure magic link generated from the efsta Portal, which opens the onboarding wizard hosted by Iopole. This registers the company in the French national directory with its electronic address.

Important

No E-Invoices can be sent or received until the company is registered in the directory. Registration completes asynchronously and can take several hours, so onboarding should be started early. Signing the mandate during onboarding is required in order to receive invoices.

Onboarding steps

The steps are completed in a fixed order:

  1. Consent (GDPR)
    The merchant consents to the processing of verification data.

  2. KYC
    Identity of the legal representative (personal details, government ID, live face-match). If the person is not the legal representative, an additional delegation check is performed.

  3. KYB
    Company information (SIREN/SIRET, legal name, address), cross-checked against the official French registers.

  4. Electronic address registration
    The company's electronic address (by default 0225:SIREN) is reserved in the directory.

  5. Mandate signing
    Required only to receive B2B E-Invoices. The legal representative e-signs the platform designation mandate.

The magic link requires no account or password and expires after 12 days (a new one can be regenerated). Onboarding must be completed individually by each company's legal representative and cannot be performed in bulk.

Address already registered with another platform

Electronic addresses in the French directory are unique, so one address can be served by only one receiving platform. If a company's target address (default 0225:SIREN) is already claimed by another platform, it must first be released from that platform before it can be re-registered. This is the standard provider-switching flow, common for customers migrating from another platform, so it is worth clarifying early whether a company is already registered elsewhere.

Every French E-Invoice must carry three legally mandated payment-terms mentions (mentions légales, BR-FR-05, carried as BT-21/BT-22 notes). These are maintained per company in the efsta Portal under the e-Invoice configuration tab and are added to every French E-Invoice automatically:

Config fieldMentionSubject code
PaymentNotePenaltyLate-payment penalty terms (pénalités de retard), i.e. the company's own ratePMD
PaymentNoteRecoveryFixed €40 recovery-cost indemnity (indemnité forfaitaire pour frais de recouvrement)PMT
PaymentNoteDiscountEarly-payment discount, or an explicit statement that none is granted (escompte)AAB
Required

All three fields are mandatory. If any of them is empty, the E-Invoice fails validation with a #CFG_MISS error and is not sent. This also applies if the company grants no early-payment discount — in that case the absence must be stated explicitly (e.g. "Pas d'escompte pour paiement anticipé") rather than left blank. Enter the mention text only — the technical subject code (#PMD#, #PMT#, #AAB#) is prepended automatically.

Coming soon

Today these mentions are configured per company and applied to every French E-Invoice. In the future, notes will also be supported at the individual E-Invoice level, so they can be set per transaction in addition to overwrite the company-wide configuration.

ESR.DD Fields​

For France, the country code needs to be specified in the DD field like in the other E-Invoicing Countries. Routing to the correct recipient happens based on the buyer's electronic address provided in DDto.

  • DD="FR-TEST" - Pre-production (PPD) test environment. Transactions run through the full processing pipeline (validation, delivery and status updates) via the Iopole pre-production platform, but have no legal effect. (see Testing).
  • DD="FR" - Live environment for processing real E-Invoices. All transactions are legally binding.

ESR.DDto Fields​

The DDto field carries the buyer's electronic address in the Peppol-Network, using the French Electronic Address Scheme (EAS) 0225 followed by the recipient's SIREN.

AttributeDescriptionFormatExample
ESR.DDtoThe buyer's registered electronic address in the French directory. Standard form is 0225: + the buyer's SIREN.Regex"0225:123456789"
note

The DDto field is required for French B2B E-Invoices. If the address is missing or cannot be found in the directory, delivery is terminated. In addition, the buyer's intra-community VAT number must be provided in ESR.Ctm.TaxId. Where a company has registered a more granular address (e.g. based on its SIRET), DDto must carry that actual registered address.

Important

ESR.DD and ESR.DDto alone are not sufficient for France. Either the field ESR.Ctm_BuyerReference or ESR.OrderReference is also required. More information can be found on the Additional Properties page.

Example Request
{"Tra":
    {"ESR":
        {"D" : "2026-07-07T08:30:15", "TL" : "001", "TT" : "1", "T" : "34.90", "TN" : "2", "Opr" : "101", "OprN" : "Mario Rossi", "OprTIN" : "xxx", "TP" : "Table 1",
        "DD" : "FR-TEST", "DDto" : "0225:123456789",
        "Ctm" : { "TaxId" : "FR83404833048", "Nam" : "Example Buyer SARL", "Nam2" : "c/o Jane Doe", "PB" : "4711", "Adr" : "1 Rue de Rivoli", "Adr2" : "Suite 123", "Zip" : "75001", "City" : "Paris", "State" : "IDF", "BuyerReference" : "123456789"},
        "PosA" : [
            { "_" : "Pos", "PTY" : "Svc", "PN" : "1", "IN" : "1030", "Dsc" : "Example Service", "TaxG" : "A", "Amt" : "34.90" }
            ],
        "PayA" : [
            { "_" : "Pay", "Dsc" : "Example Payment", "PayG" : "cash", "Amt" : "40.00" },
            { "_" : "Pay", "Dsc" : "Example Change", "PayG" : "change", "Amt" : "-5.10" }
        ],
        }
    }
}

Testing​

A transaction is treated as a test transaction whenever DD ends in -TEST.

France provides a full pre-production (PPD) environment that mirrors the live process end-to-end. Because participation in France requires onboarding, and because test and live are fully isolated, a company (SIREN) must be onboarded separately in each environment. Testing is therefore a two-step process: onboard the company in pre-production once via the efsta Portal, then send test transactions with DD="FR-TEST".

Receiving e-invoices

Support for receiving e-invoices through our efsta portal will be available for testing by mid-August.

PPD onboarding still requires the legal representative

Even in pre-production, KYC/KYB and directory registration must be completed by the SIREN's legal representative (or a delegated representative), exactly as in the live environment.

See Onboarding for the full KYC/KYB flow.

Sending & Receiving​

B2B E-Invoices are transmitted from your POS/ERP via the EFR to the efsta E-Invoicing service, which normalizes the data, transforms it into the required UBL format, runs formal validation checks, and forwards the result to the certified platform for final validation and delivery. The exact XML that was sent is retained and can be downloaded from the Portal. Inbound invoices addressed to your registered electronic address are routed back to the efsta Portal inbox, where they can be viewed, downloaded and tracked. Receiving requires that the mandate was signed during onboarding.

Good to know

Because delivery is asynchronous, the register response only confirms that the invoice was accepted for processing. The final status is reported back afterwards and shown in the Portal. A submitted invoice should not be blindly resent, as each register creates a new invoice, and an invoice number reused by the same supplier within the same calendar year is rejected as a duplicate.

note

Outbound E-Invoices are generated and sent as UBL (EN 16931). Inbound invoices in any of the three French formats (Factur-X, CII, UBL) are accepted and downloadable in the efsta Portal inbox.

E-Reporting​

In addition to B2B E-Invoicing, France requires E-Reporting, which is the transmission of transaction data to the tax administration (DGFiP) for transactions that are not covered by domestic B2B E-Invoicing. efsta handles E-Reporting automatically, so no separate requests are required.

Whether a transaction becomes an E-Invoice or an E-Report is determined by the buyer's status:

Transaction typeHandling
Domestic B2B (taxable French buyer)Sent as an E-Invoice via the platform. No separate E-Reporting is required, as the tax data is derived from the E-Invoice.
B2C (non-taxable customer)Reported via E-Reporting (aggregated transaction data). B2C invoices are not transmitted over the network.
Cross-border B2B (non-French business)E-Invoices are exchanged via the Peppol network and reported via E-Reporting (international transaction data).

The reporting frequency depends on the company's VAT regime and is handled entirely on the platform side, so no configuration is required on the POS. No separate onboarding is required for E-Reporting – the E-Invoicing onboarding covers both.

Edge case

Two things decide the flow: the customer's VAT status, and whether the seller can issue a structured invoice at the point of sale.

A sale to a private individual is always B2C E-Reporting, whatever the amount. Where the seller can issue a full invoice and the customer is a taxable business, the seller must send a B2B E-Invoice via the PA (rather than a simple receipt) when the customer explicitly requests an invoice or the bill exceeds €150 excl. tax. Below €150 with no request, the business customer keeps the receipt and the seller declares it via E-Reporting. A restaurant bill is the clearest example.

Exception — automated/unattended sellers: a toll charge is never sent via the PA and is systematically B2C E-Reporting, regardless of amount, payment method, or the customer being VAT-registered — the €150 and "explicit request" levers don't apply. (The transaction can still support VAT recovery: the receipt is a valid deductibility document, added manually to the pre-filled declaration.)

Archiving​

French law requires invoices to be retained for 10 years. Legal electronic archiving (eArchiving) is provided as part of the certified platform. The EFR's own storage of invoices and submission logs is operational and does not, by itself, constitute certified legal archiving.