France is making electronic invoicing mandatory. Here's what you need to know about the timeline.
According to the European Commission, the rollout follows a phased approach:
September 2026: All businesses must accept e-invoices. Large and medium B2B companies must use e-invoicing and e-reporting. Extension is possible until December 2026.
September 2027: Small businesses and micro enterprises must use e-invoicing and e-reporting. Extension is possible until December 2027.
This changes the way organisations prove who they are, how transactions are traced, and how suspicious activity is detected.
Why mandatory e-invoicing
Fighting tax fraud
The biggest reason for introducing mandatory e-invoicing is to prevent tax evasion. France ranked fourth in the world this year among countries with the highest losses due to tax evasion, losing €10.1 billion.
Electronic invoicing creates a digital audit trail that makes it much harder for businesses to underreport income or claim false deductions. Real-time data transmission allows tax authorities to spot discrepancies immediately rather than during periodic audits.
Improving efficiency
Manual invoice processing is costly and prone to errors. e-invoicing streamlines the entire process, reducing administrative burden for both businesses and government agencies.
Economic competitiveness
By mandating e-invoicing, France is positioning itself as a leader in digital commerce within the EU. This creates a more efficient business environment, reduces transaction costs, and makes French companies more competitive internationally.
Regulatory harmonisation
France is following the EU's broader push towards digital invoicing standards. Many EU countries are implementing similar mandates, and France wants to ensure its businesses aren't left behind in this digital transition.
Data-driven insights
Electronic invoicing generates valuable economic data that helps government agencies make better policy decisions, track economic trends in real-time, and respond more quickly to market changes.
Who is affected and how
All VAT-registered businesses operating in France
If you issue or receive invoices in France, you will need to support the mandated formats and reporting channels. Larger firms are required earlier than smaller ones under the phased timetable, but ultimately the obligation covers the whole ecosystem.
Accounting, treasury and AP or AR teams
Processes will move from paper/PDF email workflows to structured data pipelines. That changes how invoices are validated, matched to orders and paid — and who has access to the invoice metadata.
Compliance, KYC and AML functions
Regulators will have more granular, standardised transaction data. Organisations will be expected to reconcile that data against customer/supplier identities, report suspicious patterns faster, and maintain stronger audit trails.
Service providers and software vendors
ERPs, accounting software, payment platforms and fintech's must integrate with public portals and partner platforms and implement format conversion, validation, and secure exchange.
How e-invoicing impacts KYC, AML and ID verification
Improving identity verification with richer, standardised data
Structured invoices carry discrete fields (VAT/SIREN/SIRET, legal name, address, IBAN, invoice-level identifiers, VAT amounts). That makes it far easier to match an invoice to a verified legal entity in corporate registries (e.g. INSEE/SIRENE) or to validate VAT IDs via VIES. Automated entity resolution replaces brittle manual lookups.
Onboarding and periodic KYB checks can be automated by cross-referencing the SIREN/SIRET and VAT number from the invoice with authoritative registers, and by checking that the invoice’s IBAN and signatory match the verified corporate record.
Real-time e-invoicing data enhances AML detection
With continuous reporting or frequent e-invoice flows, tax authorities and firms can detect anomalies much sooner (e.g. sudden spikes in volume, frequent low-value invoices that look like trade-based money-laundering patterns, or rapid supplier onboarding followed by large payments). That raises expectations for companies to monitor incoming/outgoing invoices and surface suspicious patterns in near real time.
Audit trails in e-invoicing help reduce fraud
Structured e-invoices create an auditable chain: issue → acceptance → payment instruction. That makes it harder to repurpose fake invoices anonymously.
However, because invoices contain more identity data in machine-readable form, attackers will try to abuse invoice submission channels (for example by registering fake suppliers with plausible SIREN/SIRET and spoofed bank details). So identity verification at the point of supplier registration becomes more important than ever.
How e-invoicing impacts KYB, UBO and authorised signatures
Invoices identify legal entities, but KYC/KYB must also verify who controls and can legally sign or invoice on behalf of those entities (beneficial owners, authorised representatives).
The structured invoice gives the entity’s identifiers. The remaining gaps are people: is the invoice signatory and the bank account owner the same authorised person or a fraudster? Identity verification methods like ID document and biometric checks, corporate registry cross-checks, and UBO discovery become critical.
Ensuring data privacy and protection in e-invoicing
More data travelling in structured form increases the need to encrypt, minimise, and log access. Firms must ensure they only retain what is necessary for compliance, control who can query invoice metadata, and meet GDPR obligations for personal data embedded in invoices. This is both a legal and an operational requirement.
How Fourthline can help
Fourthline specialises in digital identity and compliance workflows that sit exactly where these needs emerge. Here are concrete ways Fourthline can support your business adapting to the French e-invoicing regime:
Person-level identity checks for authorised signatories
When an invoice contains or is submitted by a person, Fourthline’s ID document checks, biometric liveness and data-extraction can verify that the submitter is who they claim to be and is authorised to act for the company.
The verification flow performs over 210 automated checks on every document and selfie, with 90% of those checks running automatically.
This prevents supplier-onboarding fraud and protects against fake signatory abuse.
IBAN/account holder verification
Fourthline can tie IBAN checks and bank-account validation into the identity verification flow, detecting if the IBAN from the payment is in the same name as the person identified with the ID verification. This helps businesses detect and prevent a common type of fraud.
UBO discovery, sanctions and PEP screening
Fourthline runs comprehensive UBO resolution and continuous screening across sanctions, PEP, and adverse media lists. The platform also screens legal entities against sanction and adverse media databases, plus allows you to add custom lists of people your business wants to avoid.
When hits are confirmed, Fourthline delivers detailed reports with extensive evidence. This lets you examine the specifics of each match and understand exactly why someone was flagged.
The system also generates risk scores that help you escalate high-risk suppliers before any payments go through. For potential or confirmed hits that need deeper investigation, Fourthline's expert agents conduct additional checks and Open Source Intelligence investigations.
Auditability & evidence packaging
For regulator requests and internal audits, Fourthline retains immutable evidence of verification results tied to specific invoices (document images, screening results, timestamps), helping you show due diligence and defend decisions.
Key takeaways on e-invoicing, KYC, AML and identity
France’s move to mandatory e-invoicing and e-reporting is primarily a tax and process reform, but it’s also a compliance and identity revolution. Structured invoices give firms and regulators richer data to prevent fraud and detect money-laundering, but they also demand tighter identity proofing, automated KYB, and streaming AML controls.
Are you ready for the French e-invoicing rollout? Turn fraud prevention into your competitive advantage, just like Qonto and Shine did!
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice.
