Short answer: from 1 September 2026, every VAT-registered French business must be able to receive electronic invoices through an approved platform. An invoice sent by fax — however legible, however well acknowledged — no longer meets the structured-format requirements applicable between VAT-registered businesses. Fax remains usable for everything else: purchase orders, letters, medical or legal documents, exchanges with correspondents outside the scope. But for domestic B2B invoicing, it's over.
For several months now we have been getting the same question from our users — tradespeople, professional practices and small trading businesses: "I've been faxing invoices to my customer for fifteen years, he pays me, nobody has ever complained. Do I really have to change everything?" The answer is yes — but not for the reasons people assume, and not in every case.
Let's go through it, calendar in hand, and see what the reform really changes for those who still use fax day to day.
What the reform says, in plain language
Three obligations, not one
The roll-out of electronic invoicing in France is based on Ordinance no. 2021-1190 of 15 September 2021, amended several times by successive finance acts. It actually stacks up three distinct obligations that many people confuse:
- E-invoicing: issuing and receiving invoices between VAT-registered businesses established in France, in a structured (or hybrid) format, through an Approved Platform (PA, formerly "PDP" — partner dematerialisation platform).
- E-reporting: transmitting transaction data to the tax authorities for operations that fall outside e-invoicing — sales to consumers (B2C) and cross-border transactions.
- Payment e-reporting: reporting collections for service provision, which determines when VAT becomes chargeable.
Fax only trips over the first one, but that's the most structural.
The timeline that matters
| Deadline | What becomes mandatory | Who is concerned |
|---|---|---|
| 1 September 2026 | Receiving electronic invoices | All VAT-registered businesses, regardless of size |
| 1 September 2026 | Issuing electronic invoices | Large companies and mid-sized companies (ETI) |
| 1 September 2027 | Issuing electronic invoices | SMEs, micro-businesses and sole traders |
In other words: even the sole trader who invoices just two clients a month must, as of this autumn 2026, be reachable by an approved platform. They can no longer say "send it to me by fax or post, I don't have anything electronic". The Direction générale des finances publiques (DGFiP) and the chambers of commerce and industry communicated extensively on this point in the first half of 2026: the obligation to receive is universal and immediate, while the obligation to issue is phased in.
Key takeaway: your compliance isn't determined by your software, it's determined by the channel the invoice travels through and the format it is encoded in.
Why a faxed invoice is no longer compliant
Fax transmits an image, not data
This is the heart of the problem, and it is technical before it is legal. A fax — whether it goes over an analogue line, over the T.38 protocol in VoIP, or through a fax-to-email service — transmits a graphic representation of the document. At the other end, the recipient gets an image, possibly wrapped in a PDF. No machine can reliably extract from it the intra-EU VAT number, the net amount, the applicable rate or the due date.
Yet the reform requires precisely the opposite: a file whose data is machine-readable. Three core formats have been selected, all compliant with the European standard EN 16931:
- Factur-X: a Franco-German hybrid format, a PDF/A-3 readable by the human eye with a structured XML file embedded inside it. This is the most comfortable format for small businesses, because it still looks like a normal invoice.
- UBL (Universal Business Language): pure XML, an OASIS standard.
- CII (Cross Industry Invoice): also pure XML, a UN/CEFACT standard.
By design, a fax cannot carry any of these three formats. Even if you were to fax a Factur-X invoice, what arrives at the other end is a photocopy of its visible part: the embedded XML has vanished along the way.
The "free-form" PDF is going too
Many assumed they could get around this by replacing fax with a simple email and an attached PDF. That was already the dominant practice among micro-businesses. But the reform puts an end to that convenience: once the obligation to issue takes effect, a PDF sent by email on a peer-to-peer basis no longer counts as an invoice between French VAT-registered businesses. A transitional tolerance has been provided for plain PDFs uploaded to an approved platform, but it is time-limited (with an announced end date of 31 December 2027) and assumes the platform itself converts the document.
In short: neither fax, nor the classic email attachment, nor paper post survives in the target regime for domestic B2B invoicing.
What fax can still do, and does well
It would be absurd to conclude that fax has no use left. It is leaving the tax circuit, not the document circuit. Our usage statistics, like the feedback we receive through our contact form, show that most traffic doesn't involve invoices anyway.
Perfectly legitimate use cases remain:
- Purchase orders and delivery notes exchanged with a supplier who has nothing else. No rule locks them into a structured format.
- Cross-border exchanges, where the French obligation does not apply to the channel. An invoice to a Belgian, Moroccan or Canadian client falls under e-reporting on the data side, not e-invoicing on the transmission side.
- Healthcare documents sent between professionals when the correspondent is not yet connected to a secure messaging system — a topic we covered in detail in our article on medical practices.
- Letters with evidentiary value: formal notices, contract terminations, insurance claim notifications, filing documents with a court registry or a law firm. Many public bodies still accept, and sometimes require, a fax number.
- Dealings with non-VAT-registered parties: associations, private individuals, and in some cases property management companies.
For these uses, switching to fax-to-email remains the best technical decision, if only because the public switched telephone network keeps shutting down batch by batch under Arcep's supervision. If you nevertheless keep a physical machine in the meantime, an uninterruptible power supply with voltage regulation prevents you from losing the line at every micro power cut — a trivial detail that solves 80% of the "my fax won't go through" reports in rural areas.
Organising the transition without breaking everything
Step 1: identify your approved platform
Since 2025, the list of Approved Platforms has been published and kept up to date by the tax administration. There is no shortage of candidates: established accounting software vendors, dematerialisation operators, banks, and even certain chambers of commerce offering pooled deals for their members. Three practical criteria for choosing:
- Compatibility with your current invoicing software. If you already work with a mainstream French business management tool, it almost certainly offers a native connector.
- The way you receive invoices. Some approved platforms offer a simple web portal, which is plenty if you receive ten invoices a month. Others require API integration, which is oversized for a micro-business.
- Archiving. Check the retention period included and its compliance with the six years required by the French Tax Procedures Code — and the ten years required by the Commercial Code for accounting records.
Step 2: clean up your customer database
This is the step everyone skips and the one that costs the most afterwards. Invoice routing relies on the central directory, populated with SIREN and SIRET numbers. One wrong SIRET, a closed establishment, an outdated company name, and the invoice ends up nowhere. Set aside a morning, export your customer file, and check it against the business register. A document scanner with an automatic feeder comes in handy on that occasion to digitise the old paper files still sitting in your binders and to verify the details.
Step 3: move fax over to email
If you still use a fax machine connected to the network, take advantage of this period to switch to fax-to-email. The reasoning is simple: you're going to have to handle your invoices as PDFs in a mailbox or a portal anyway. You may as well unify your incoming flows. Our guides on receiving faxes by email and on sending from a smartphone explain how to do it.
A tip from the field: keep both channels running in parallel for six months. Some correspondents don't warn you that they have changed method, and an invoice lost in September turns into an unpaid-invoice chase in November.
Step 4: train your team, even if there are only three of you
Compliance isn't won in the software, it's won in everyday habits. A multifunction printer with automatic double-sided scanning placed near the desk, a clear filing system, and a ten-line written rule pinned to the wall are often enough to avoid mistakes. For those who want to understand the underlying principles, the practical guides on invoicing and small-business accounting published every year remain a worthwhile read — allow one evening for the essentials.
The sticking point: proof
One argument always comes up in favour of fax: "at least I get a transmission receipt." That's true — and it's precisely what the reform replaces with something better.
In the target regime, each invoice receives a unique identifier and its journey is marked out by mandatory statuses: submitted, rejected, refused, paid. These statuses travel between platforms and are reported to the tax authorities. You no longer depend on a report printed by a machine in your corridor: you have a time-stamped audit trail, enforceable in law, and visible to both parties.
In practice, this settles a classic dispute — the client who claims never to have received the invoice. With fax, you could prove that a call had connected to a number. With the platform, you prove that an identified document was made available to a given SIRET on a given date. The difference is considerable before a commercial court.
That doesn't exempt you from archiving properly. For documents that continue to travel by fax, the rule remains the one we set out in our article on archiving: keep the source document, the transmission receipt and the activity log, on two separate media. An encrypted external hard drive stored off-site remains the simplest cold backup for a small business to set up, alongside the cloud.
Frequently asked questions
Can I still send an invoice by fax to a foreign client?
Yes. The e-invoicing obligation only covers transactions between VAT-registered businesses established in France. An invoice to Spain, Germany, Portugal or Canada can still be sent through the channel of your choice — subject to the local rules of the destination country, since Italy and Spain have their own systems. The transaction data, however, must be reported through e-reporting.
I'm under the VAT exemption scheme for small businesses. Am I concerned?
Yes for receiving, from September 2026, and yes for issuing at your applicable deadline. The criterion is being VAT-registered, not whether you charge VAT. Micro-entrepreneurs under the exemption scheme are VAT-registered but not liable for VAT: they fall within the scheme.
Is an invoice received by fax in 2026 void?
No, it isn't void under contract law, and the debt exists. But it does not constitute a compliant invoice for tax purposes, which exposes the issuer to a flat-rate fine per invoice (capped annually) and can undermine the recipient's VAT deduction. The right reflex: accept the document, pay if the service was genuinely provided, and ask for a compliant invoice to be issued through a platform.
What if my supplier refuses to move to a platform?
Remind them that the obligation to receive already applies to them too, and that the obligation to issue will catch up with them on 1 September 2027 if they are a micro-business or an SME. Most chambers of commerce and industry run free drop-in support sessions — that's the most effective lever for convincing a holdout.
Can my fax-to-email service act as my approved platform?
No, these are two different businesses. An online fax service carries images of documents; an approved platform processes structured flows, manages the directory, the statuses and the reporting to the tax authorities. The two can coexist without competing.
In summary
- Since 1 September 2026, every VAT-registered business in France must be able to receive electronic invoices through an approved platform.
- The obligation to issue applies to large and mid-sized companies from 2026, and to SMEs, micro-businesses and sole traders from 1 September 2027.
- The accepted formats are Factur-X, UBL and CII, all compliant with the European standard EN 16931. Fax cannot carry any of them.
- The plain PDF by email is also disappearing from the tax circuit, once the transitional tolerance expires.
- Fax remains entirely legitimate for purchase orders, letters with evidentiary value, healthcare documents, international exchanges and dealings with non-VAT-registered parties.
- The three tasks to tackle now: choose your platform, make your SIREN/SIRET data reliable, and move residual faxing over to fax-to-email.
- The fax transmission receipt is replaced by a system of time-stamped statuses that is far more robust in the event of a dispute.
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