E-Invoicing Mandate Statistics

Last updated: September 2026

France's business-to-business e-invoicing mandate took effect on 1 September 2026, joining mandates already live in Belgium, Poland and Italy. This page collects the dated figures that describe those mandates: who is obliged and when, how many accredited platforms exist, which formats are required, and which invoice data is mandatory versus optional. Every figure is attributed to its source, with its scope and date.

Where sources disagree, both figures are given rather than reconciled. Where a widely repeated figure has no traceable primary source, it is listed in the excluded section at the bottom rather than published.

France: scope and calendar

1 September 2026 is the date from which all VAT-subject companies established in France must be able to receive electronic invoices, and from which large companies and mid-caps (entreprises de taille intermédiaire) must issue them. Applies to domestic business-to-business transactions between VAT-subject parties. (economie.gouv.fr)

1 September 2027 is the date from which the issuing obligation extends to small and medium enterprises and micro-enterprises. The receiving obligation applied to these companies from 1 September 2026; only issuing is deferred. (entreprendre.service-public.gouv.fr)

Through the end of 2026, the tax administration has stated it will not apply sanctions to companies encountering difficulties in implementation. Described by the administration as a phase of listening and tolerance covering the remainder of 2026. (economie.gouv.fr)

Two distinct obligations are created, not one: electronic invoicing for domestic business-to-business transactions, and e-reporting, the transmission of transaction and payment data to the tax administration. E-reporting covers operations with individual customers, certain associations, and foreign operators, which fall outside the invoicing obligation. (impots.gouv.fr · francenum.gouv.fr)

France: legal basis

The French mandate is not the transposition of an EU directive. No directive required it. But it could not have existed without EU authorisation, and the standard it converges on is itself the creature of a directive. Both points are load-bearing and are widely misstated.

Article 232 of Directive 2006/112/EC made a domestic e-invoicing mandate impossible until 2025: the use of electronic invoices was subject to acceptance by the recipient. The VAT Directive. A member state wishing to impose electronic invoicing had to obtain a derogation from the Council of the European Union under Article 395. (EUR-Lex, Decision 2022/133 recitals)

25 January 2022 is the date of the Council Implementing Decision authorising France to derogate from Articles 218 and 232 of Directive 2006/112/EC, which is what made the mandate legally possible. Council Implementing Decision (EU) 2022/133. France applied in April then September 2021. The operative text authorises France to accept invoices only in electronic form, and to provide that their use is not subject to the recipient's acceptance. Initially valid to 31 December 2026. (EUR-Lex)

15 September 2021 and 7 October 2022 are the dates of the French domestic instruments, both later than the derogation request and framed by it. Ordonnance n° 2021-1190 and Décret n° 2022-1299. The calendar they set was subsequently reset by the loi de finances pour 2024. (Légifrance, ordonnance · Légifrance, décret)

14 April 2025 is the date from which the recipient-acceptance requirement no longer applies, under the ViDA directive, so member states no longer need a derogation to mandate domestic e-invoicing. Council Directive (EU) 2025/516 of 11 March 2025, amending Directive 2006/112/EC. The same directive ties the definition of an electronic invoice to the European standard EN 16931, which originates in Directive 2014/55/EU on electronic invoicing in public procurement. For purely domestic operations, member states may authorise other formats under defined conditions. (EUR-Lex)

The sequence is therefore: EU law blocked the mandate, then authorised France by exception, then removed the obstacle for everyone, and by 2030 makes e-invoicing compulsory on intra-EU cross-border business-to-business transactions.

A further extension of the French derogation to 31 December 2028, by Council Implementing Decision (EU) 2024/2074 of 30 July 2024, is reported by legal commentary but has not been checked against the EUR-Lex text here. It is recorded in the excluded section rather than published as verified.

France: accredited platforms

Invoices and reported data must both pass through a plateforme agréée (PA), an operator accredited by the DGFiP. The category was previously named plateforme de dématérialisation partenaire (PDP); both names refer to the same role.

The official registry publishes no consolidated count. The tax administration's platform page links to the list of accredited platforms without stating a total or a snapshot date. Verified 2 September 2026. (impots.gouv.fr)

137 accredited platforms are recorded in the enriched DGFiP list published as an open dataset on the French government's open data portal, under Licence Ouverte 2.0. Dataset last updated 25 June 2026, so it predates the 1 September go-live by roughly two months. Fields cover commercial name, website, registration date and contact details. It carries no information on programmatic access, supported formats or lifecycle statuses. (data.gouv.fr)

The count is reported differently by commercial comparison sites, with figures between 145 and 166 circulating for late August 2026 on varying definitions (accredited operators, accreditations issued, and files pending interoperability testing are counted differently). These are secondary compilations rather than primary publications, and are not reproduced here as figures. The gap between the 137 in the open dataset of 25 June and the higher counts reported for 31 August is consistent with continued accreditation over the summer, but no primary source has been found that dates a total.

Invoice formats and lifecycle data

Three structured formats are accepted for the invoice itself: Factur-X, UBL and CII. Factur-X is a hybrid format carrying a PDF and structured XML in one file; UBL and CII are XML syntaxes. (francenum.gouv.fr)

A defined set of lifecycle statuses accompanies each invoice through the accredited platform, of which a small subset is mandatory and the remainder optional. Vendor documentation consistently describes 14 statuses with 4 mandatory, and names the mandatory ones as deposited, rejected (platform-detected anomaly), refused (customer dispute) and collected, the last applying to service provision where VAT is due on payment. The exact codes are defined in the DGFiP external specifications; the figure and the code numbers are attributed only to vendor documentation in the sources reviewed here, so they are recorded in the excluded section rather than published as verified. (impots.gouv.fr, e-reporting of payment data)

Europe: the mandate wave

1 January 2026 is the date from which all VAT-paying Belgian enterprises are required to use structured electronic invoices, exchanged over the Peppol network on the European standard EN 16931. (SPS Commerce)

1 February 2026 is the date from which large taxpayers in Poland must issue invoices through KSeF, the national e-invoicing platform, in the FA(3) XML format. Most other VAT-registered businesses follow from 1 April 2026, and micro-entrepreneurs from 1 January 2027. (Invoice Navigator)

January 2025 is the date from which German businesses were required to be able to receive electronic invoices, with issuing obligations phased in from 2027. (SPS Commerce)

1 July 2030 is the date from which electronic invoicing on the European standard EN 16931 becomes mandatory for intra-Community business-to-business transactions, under the EU's VAT in the Digital Age (ViDA) directive. ViDA covers three pillars: digital reporting and e-invoicing for intra-EU business-to-business transactions, platform economy VAT rules, and expansion of the One Stop Shop. (Invoxo)

The four country figures above are attributed to commercial compliance publishers rather than to each member state's own legal instrument. They are included because the dates are uncontested across the sources reviewed and are consistent with the ViDA framework, but they are weaker sourcing than the French figures above and should be re-verified against national sources at the next revision.

What the mandates make available, and what they leave optional

The mandates standardise the invoice document and a minimum set of lifecycle events. They do not standardise the interface through which a company reads its own data back. Programmatic access to invoices and their statuses is a feature of each accredited platform, not a requirement of the mandate, and the official registry records nothing about it.

The open dataset of accredited platforms carries no field describing programmatic access, supported formats, or which lifecycle statuses a platform exposes. Fields are limited to commercial name, website, registration date and contact details. (data.gouv.fr)

Two accredited platforms publish that access openly, as examples of what varies between operators rather than as a comparison of the field:

Pennylane documents e-invoicing status on customer and supplier invoices in its public API, a method to update the lifecycle status of a received invoice, and a customer_invoice.e_invoicing_status_updated webhook event. Verified against public developer documentation, 2 September 2026. (pennylane.readme.io)

Qonto documents an einvoicing_status property on its v2/client_invoices endpoint, and Factur-X generation. Verified against public developer documentation, 2 September 2026. (docs.qonto.com)

Sources

economie.gouv.fr, Tout savoir sur la facturation électronique pour les entreprises. Link
economie.gouv.fr, Facturation électronique entre entreprises : coup d'envoi de la réforme. Link
impots.gouv.fr, Facturation électronique et plateformes agréées. Link
impots.gouv.fr, Fiche réforme : e-reporting des données de paiement (PDF). Link
francenum.gouv.fr, Guide du e-reporting des données de transaction et de paiement. Link
entreprendre.service-public.gouv.fr, Facturation électronique : soyez prêt au 1er septembre 2026. Link
data.gouv.fr, Plateformes Agréées (PA / ex-PDP), Liste DGFiP enrichie 2026, Licence Ouverte 2.0, updated 25 June 2026. Link
EUR-Lex, Council Implementing Decision (EU) 2022/133 of 25 January 2022 (France derogation from Arts 218 and 232). Link
EUR-Lex, Council Directive (EU) 2025/516 of 11 March 2025 (ViDA, amending Directive 2006/112/EC). Link
Légifrance, Ordonnance n° 2021-1190 du 15 septembre 2021. Link
Légifrance, Décret n° 2022-1299 du 7 octobre 2022. Link
SPS Commerce, E-Invoicing Mandates in Europe: The 2026 Business Guide. Link
Invoice Navigator, EU E-Invoicing Deadlines 2026–2030. Link
Invoxo, ViDA: EU E-Invoicing Mandate Explained. Link
Pennylane developer documentation. Link
Qonto developer documentation. Link

Excluded figures

Kept here as guardrails, per the inclusion standard. These are not published above.

"14 lifecycle statuses, 4 of them mandatory", and the status codes 200 / 210 / 212 / 213. Consistently reported across vendor documentation (Pennylane, Qonto, Tiime, Esker, Indy, FrenchInvoice) but not verified against the DGFiP external specifications, which are the primary definition. Ships once the specification is pinned.
"150 accredited platforms, plus 16 files pending interoperability testing, for 166 operators as of 31 August 2026." Reported by commercial comparison sites. No primary publication found that dates a total. The counting basis also varies between sources (operators, accreditations, pending files).
"147 accreditations for 145 operators." Same issue, different basis, same conclusion.
Extension of the French derogation to 31 December 2028 by Council Implementing Decision (EU) 2024/2074 of 30 July 2024. Reported consistently by legal commentary, not checked against the EUR-Lex text here. Ships once the decision itself is read.
Adoption rates of the mandate by company size. No measurement published at the time of writing. The mandate is two days old and the tolerance period runs to the end of 2026, so any early figure would measure readiness declarations rather than adoption.

Changelog

2026-09: Added the legal-basis section. The mandate is not a directive transposition, but it required a Council derogation from Article 232 of the VAT Directive (Decision 2022/133) and converges on EN 16931, which comes from Directive 2014/55/EU. An earlier internal note describing the reform as "a French law, not an EU act" was too blunt and is corrected here.
2026-09: Page created, one day after the French mandate took effect. France, platform registry and European figures sourced. Lifecycle status codes and platform totals excluded pending primary sources.

E-Invoicing Mandate Statistics (2026)