Retail & commerce · France · Tax compliance

The free public portal that vanished: France's facturation électronique 2026.

For every VAT-registered French operator — the boulangerie with two salariés, the e-commerce shop, the artisan-bâtiment, the cabinet d'expertise, the mid-cap industriel — 1 September 2026 turns the act of issuing or receiving a B2B invoice into something that must travel through a state-immatriculée Plateforme Agréée. The free public option French operators were promised for two years was abandoned by the government on 15 October 2024. What French operators on the trade press, the accountants' guides and the SME federations report is selection paralysis between 100+ private platforms, integration windows that stretch as the deadline approaches, an e-reporting obligation that a lot of TPE did not know existed, and a sanction stack — €15 per non-compliant invoice, €250 per missing e-reporting transmission, plus the very real risk of TVA-deduction refusal.

01The pain

The reception obligation is not in dispute and not negotiable. The DGFiP, in its public guide to the reform on impots.gouv.fr, states the operational rule for every assujetti without exception: "Les entreprises assujetties devront en effet recourir aux services d'une plateforme agréée à compter du 1er septembre 2026."² The portal that the same DGFiP runs — entreprendre.service-public.gouv.fr — frames the same date as a single horizontal obligation: "L'obligation de recevoir des factures électroniques s'appliquera pour l'ensemble des entreprises dès le 1er septembre 2026."¹ Issuance follows the same calendar for the largest operators: "le 1er septembre 2026 pour les grandes entreprises et les entreprises de taille intermédiaire (ETI)";¹ TPE/PME and micro-entrepreneurs are pulled in on 1 September 2027. There is no operator carve-out, no industry exemption, no rural delay. Every B2B invoice issued in France on or after 1 September 2026 has to be either issued through a Plateforme Agréée or received through one.

What changed under operators on 15 October 2024 was the route. The free public emission/reception platform that operators had spent two years budgeting around — the Portail Public de Facturation — was withdrawn in a single ministerial communication. Trade-press coverage records the reversal in plain language: "Le 15 octobre 2024, le ministère de l'Économie a officiellement annoncé l'abandon du PPF comme plateforme d'émission et de réception de factures."⁴ The PPF was not deleted — it was demoted: "Le PPF ne conserve que son rôle d'annuaire central et de concentrateur des données fiscales transmises à l'administration."⁴ The operational consequence is the one that matters at the till counter and the cabinet comptable: "Toutes les entreprises assujetties à la TVA passent obligatoirement par une PA (Plateforme Agréée, anciennement PDP), quelle que soit leur taille."⁴ The free option is gone. There is no fallback. Every operator now picks a private platform and pays for it.

A regulation operators describe by what it costs them to choose: a 1 September 2026 reception obligation for every assujetti, with grandes entreprises and ETI also obligated to emit from the same date; a Portail Public de Facturation abandoned 15 October 2024, demoted to an annuaire role only; 100+ private Plateformes Agréées to triage between PA-immatriculée and PA-candidate; an e-reporting obligation for B2C and intra-EU flows that many TPE did not know existed; a sanction stack the trade press cites as €15 per non-compliant invoice and €250 per missing e-reporting transmission, plus the "vrai risque" of TVA-deduction refusal on inbound invoices that arrive outside the PA channel.^1,2,3,4

The DGFiP's own definition of what counts as an accredited platform, on impots.gouv.fr, is what produces the selection paralysis the accountants' press describes. The administration draws an explicit operational line: "Une plateforme agréée est une plateforme immatriculée par l'administration fiscale,"² and "À défaut d'immatriculation par l'administration fiscale, cet opérateur n'aura pas la qualité de plateforme agréée."² An operator who picks a "PA-candidate" platform that does not finish immatriculation in time is — at 1 September 2026 — using something that "n'aura pas la qualité de plateforme agréée" and therefore cannot legally transmit. The same DGFiP page is unambiguous about the scope of what only a fully accredited PA can do: "Seule une plateforme agréée est habilitée à assurer toutes les fonctionnalités prévues par la réforme en matière de facturation électronique et de e-reporting."² An operator who confuses "PA-candidat" with "PA-immatriculée" is buying a service that may not be legally able to do its job on the day the obligation lands.

What worries the smallest operators most is what they did not know was in the reform until accountants started writing it down. The accountants' press at compta-online frames the choice of platform not as a technology purchase but as an operational compliance decision an operator now has to take alone: "Au-delà des fonctionnalités minimales obligatoires (inscription à l'annuaire, émission, réception, e-reporting), le choix d'une plateforme agréée doit tenir compte de plusieurs critères opérationnels."³ The e-reporting obligation — the transmission of B2C and intra-EU transaction data to the administration in parallel to the structured invoice — is what the same press treats as the silent burden, defined by the DGFiP itself as "Transmission de certaines données de la facture à l'administration fiscale (par exemple, identification du fournisseur et du client, montant HT de l'opération, montant de la TVA due, taux de TVA appliqué …)."² A retailer with B2C tickets, an e-commerce operator selling intra-EU, an artisan invoicing private clients — all of them, under e-reporting, owe the administration a parallel transmission they did not owe before. The federation pushback has been on the public record through 2025: SME federations have publicly told the government the reform asks TPE to "take a leap" without simplification or support, and parliamentary amendments through 2025 sought further delays, none of which moved the September 2026 horizon. The pain French SMB operators report today is not a future fine. It is having to pick — alone, between 100+ moving platforms, half of them not yet immatriculée — the one route that will still be legally transmitting on the morning of 1 September 2026.

¹ entreprendre.service-public.gouv.fr (DGFiP / French government SME-information portal) — "Facturation électronique : un calendrier en plusieurs étapes": entreprendre.service-public.gouv.fr/actualites/A15683
² impots.gouv.fr (Direction générale des Finances publiques — French tax administration) — "Facturation électronique et plateformes agréées": impots.gouv.fr/facturation-electronique-et-plateformes-agreees
³ Compta Online (French accountants' professional press) — "Facturation électronique : ce que les entreprises doivent savoir": compta-online.com/facturation-electronique-ao5562
⁴ Libeo — "Réforme de la facture électronique 2026 : le guide complet" (French B2B-payments fintech editorial guide): libeo.io/blog/reforme-facture-electronique-2026

02Who solves this today

French-market vendors that publicly self-market to the Plateforme Agréée niche on their own French-language homepage — invoicing-and-accounting platforms whose front page names PA / réforme 2026 as a core promise, ERP vendors who explicitly position their service as an immatriculée PA, and connector platforms that name PA-immatriculation as their pitch. Each entry verified live and self-marketed in the niche on the date of writing. The list is intentionally narrow.

Pennylane

French expert-comptable / SMB accounting-and-invoicing platform whose homepage carries the PA self-marketing as a top-line promise — "Pennylane certifié plateforme agréée" as a hero badge, alongside a dedicated "Facture électronique - Anticipez la réforme avec Pennylane, Plateforme Agréée" headline and a "Facturation électronique" entry in the primary navigation. The route a French TPE, PME or expert-comptable cabinet takes when they want a single product that handles the comptabilité, the facturation and the PA channel without stitching three vendors together.

pennylane.com/fr

Cegid

French ERP and finance-software vendor whose French homepage positions the PA service as a hero block — "Plateforme Agréée Cegid (ex-PDP)" with a "Réforme de la facture électronique" section header and the operational pitch "vous choisissez la mise en conformité simple et fiable". The route a slightly larger French operator — the mid-cap with Cegid Compta or Cegid XRP already in place — takes when they want their existing ERP vendor to absorb the réforme as part of the contract, not invoice them again for a second platform.

cegid.com/fr

Iopole

French Plateforme Agréée whose homepage leads with the immatriculation status itself — "Plateforme Agréée (PA, anciennement PDP)", "PA immatriculée", and the dual-role pitch "En tant que PA immatriculée par l'État et Point d'Accès PEPPOL". The route an operator (or a software editor that wants to plug a PA into its own product) takes when they want a French-immatriculée PA whose self-positioning is the PA function itself rather than a layer bolted onto an ERP — the narrow, dedicated, immatriculée route through the réforme.

iopole.com

Listed providers publicly market to the Plateforme Agréée / réforme 2026 niche on their own French-language homepages. Inclusion is not endorsement. Adjacent French-market vendors were considered and excluded where their homepages either did not WebFetch cleanly (Sage France's facturation-électronique page returned 403, Cegid's dedicated facturation-électronique sub-page returned 404 although the root self-markets the PA on its homepage) or did not contain a verbatim PA / PDP / Plateforme Agréée self-marketing phrase on the homepage itself (Libeo's homepage advertises "Facture électronique incluse" but does not self-market as a PA — its editorial guide is cited above in section 01 as a source, not as a solution). Trade-press outlets (Compta Online, Libeo guide), the DGFiP's own publications (impots.gouv.fr, entreprendre.service-public.gouv.fr) and the SME-federation positions are cited above in section 01 as the source of the operator-side narrative, not as solution providers.