On February 27, during an official meeting at the Ministry of Finance in Bercy, the DGFiP (France’s tax authority) and the AIFE (France’s state financial IT agency) officially launched the French e-invoicing pilot [↗︎] and set out the conditions for participation.
The pilot phase will mark the beginning of voluntary e-invoicing in France, with participants exchanging production data in full compliance with the mandate’s requirements. Open to all French private businesses, the initiative requires companies to coordinate with their Accredited Platforms (PA, “Plateformes Agréées”) to organize their participation.
More than 100 PAs have now been definitively certified, having successfully completed a series of tests demonstrating their ability to handle e-invoicing and e-reporting flows.
Throughout the pilot, regular meetings between the tax authority and the Accredited Platforms will ensure close coordination and smooth progress.
Public sector to join the pilot around April
A couple months after private businesses, the public sector will join the pilot as well. The goal is for Chorus Pro, France’s existing B2G e-invoicing platform, to ultimately follow the principles of an Accredited Platform (PA).
This will allow all French businesses to exchange e-invoices with both private (B2B) and public entities (B2G), and will also enable electronic transactions in the opposite direction: G2G and G2B flows.
The private and public experiences will likely not be strictly identical for transactions through Chorus Pro. Differences will include additional business identifiers required for public entities, or uncertainty over whether Peppol connectivity will be available. The pilot phase will be essential to identify many such gaps, and begin addressing those.
New versions of the AFNOR standards
To support the launch of the pilot, the three AFNOR standards, cornerstones of the e-invoicing mandate, have been updated:
- AFNOR XP Z12-012 documentation [↗︎] & annexes [↗︎]: defines the formats and profiles for all document types covered by the mandate, including e-invoices, e-reporting, and invoice lifecycle CDAR statuses, as well as the associated business rules.
- AFNOR XP Z12-013 documentation [↗︎] & swaggers [↗︎]: specifies the standardized API recommended for use between Accredited Platforms and their clients.
- AFNOR XP Z12-014 documentation [↗︎] & annexes [↗︎]: provides descriptions and guidelines for B2B e-invoicing, covering the nominal case, error cases, and 44 specific use cases.
These standards complement the DGFiP’s “External Specifications” v3.1 [↗︎] and the schematrons [↗︎] (for e-invoices & invoice lifecycle CDAR statuses) produced by FNFE, which detail the requirements Accredited Platforms (PA) must follow and how they must interact with the PPF.
With these resources, and supported by the DGFiP’s nationwide awareness campaign [↗︎] targeting all French businesses through radio and TV, companies now have everything they need to implement their projects, test them during the pilot, and prepare for the start of phase 1 on September 1, 2026.
