Tradeshift is permanently registered as a French PA and why February 2026 is the moment to decide

The start of 2026 marks three milestones for me.

• Two years at Tradeshift.
• Two years covering global e-invoicing compliance.
• And one milestone our product and engineering teams have been working towards for well over a year: Tradeshift is now permanently registered (“immatriculée définitive”) as a Plateforme Agréée (PA) for the French B2B e-invoicing mandate.

This is the final step in the French government’s approval process before external audit. It confirms that Tradeshift has passed all required technical, security, interoperability, and operational checks to connect to the French clearance system ahead of the September 2026 go-live.

For companies preparing for the mandate, this also changes something else: it removes uncertainty.

You can now choose your PA knowing that Tradeshift is formally recognised by the French state and technically ready for production use.

If France is in your scope, and you are already a Tradeshift customer, reach out to your Customer Success Manager. If you are not yet on Tradeshift, this is the right moment to start the conversation.

Where companies really are right now

On November 17, 2025, we hosted a live webinar on the French clearance mandate with our client Air France and our own product and engineering teams who live demoed our PA solution. We also ran live polls with the audience, made up of finance, tax, and IT leaders actively involved in compliance projects.

At that time:

• 48% had their projects already in progress after selecting a PA
• 24% were in the PA selection step 
• 20% had not started yet
• 8% were in the process of signing the contract with a PA

Those numbers will have moved since November. But what they showed very clearly is that a significant part (44%) of the audience was still in early or pre-project mode only ten months before go-live.

That matters, because the French model is not a simple format switch. It affects ERP integration, invoice lifecycles, supplier onboarding, and tax reporting flows. These are multi-stream projects, especially for organisations with shared services, multiple ERPs, or large supplier bases.

In our November webinar, we advised companies to start then precisely because anything less than nine to ten months quickly becomes tight when real business complexity enters the picture.

February 2026 is therefore simply your last window where you still have room to design things properly instead of just rushing to connect.

Watch the full recorded webinar with Air France which includes the demo of our PA (plateforme agréée) solution.

What the French mandate requires in practice

From September 2026, all large and intermediate companies operating in France must be able to:

• Send e-invoices through an approved PA
• Receive e-invoices from their suppliers via an approved PA
• Transmit mandatory tax and transaction data to the tax authority (DGFiP)
• Use controlled, validated invoice flows and mandated formats, and e-reporting

There will be no direct connections between companies and the tax authority. Every invoice must flow through a government-registered PA (plateforme agréée). 

Your PA is therefore not just a technical integration point. It becomes part of your compliance perimeter.

Why Tradeshift is the right PA for companies with international operations

Permanently registered by the French government

Tradeshift received its first PA registration in August 2024 and its permanent registration in January 2026.

This confirms that our platform, security, data handling, and interoperability meet all requirements set by the French administration for clearance-based invoicing.

The final “certified” status will be granted after an external audit, which Tradeshift is completing with KPMG following a design and architecture review already performed in 2025. All PAs on the market go through the same process.

Certified Peppol Access Point since 2014

Tradeshift has over a decade of operational experience running one of the world’s most active Peppol Access Points. That brings something that is hard to replicate:

• Stable, high-volume operations
• Mature supplier onboarding
• Experience with cross-border interoperability
• Deep familiarity with regulated invoice flows

France uses Peppol as part of its interoperability model,  and many other countries rely on it as well. Tradeshift already operates at that layer at scale.

Designed for both outbound (sending) and inbound (receiving)

The French mandate applies to both sides of the transaction.

Tradeshift supports:

• Outbound invoice clearance
  
• Inbound invoice clearance
  
• Status, rejection, and lifecycle handling

All within one platform and one compliance perimeter.

Any format, any ERP

France mandates specific formats, but your business doesn’t run on just one.

Through Babelway, our powerful middleware, Tradeshift can ingest, transform, and route virtually any invoice format, integrating directly with SAP, Oracle, Microsoft, and hundreds of other systems.

You do not have to redesign your ERP landscape to become compliant.

Already live in the French directory

Our client, Air France has chosen us as their plateforme agréée (PA) and are already live in production in the Annuaire, using Tradeshift as their PA.

A truly global e-Invoicing compliance platform

France is one of several countries moving to clearance or near-clearance models.

Tradeshift today supports:

• 70 countries with e-Invoicing compliance requirements
  
• 12 clearance/CTC countries, including France, Romania, Malaysia, and soon Poland
• 26 languages, supporting global AP and AR teams

That matters for companies that do not want to run a separate compliance project every time a new country changes its rules.

Compliance plus finance transformation and AI-powered AP automation

Tradeshift does not separate compliance from finance operations. On the same platform, companies get:

• Regulatory coverage
  
• Peppol exchange
  
• Supplier collaboration
  
• AI-powered invoice coding
  
• End-to-end AP automation
• Conversational and agentic AI analytics

You do not just meet the mandate. You modernise how invoices are processed.

A single partner for all your compliance projects

Instead of managing fragmented local solutions, enterprises can centralize all their mandates (France, UK, Germany, Belgium, Poland, Spain, Romania, Australia, and more) under one strategic partner.

Why February 2026 is the moment to commit

By the end of the first quarter of 2026, companies that want to be comfortable in September need to have:

• Selected their PA
  
• Finalised their architecture
  
• Begun testing real invoice flows

Waiting longer does not make the project simpler, it just compresses all of this into fewer months. From January to February 2026, you still have a narrow window to choose a PA, design your integration, and plan supplier onboarding in a controlled way.

Not acting now means you will compete with thousands of other companies for the same onboarding capacity, and with far less room for error.

Choosing Tradeshift now means you get a French-registered PA and a platform that can support your other countries as mandates continue to expand.

Choose Tradeshift as your e-invoicing compliance partner

If you are already a Tradeshift customer, much of the foundation is already in place. Whether you send, receive, or do both in France, you can activate compliance without adding another system.

If you are not yet on Tradeshift and operate across multiple countries, this is the moment to choose a partner that will still make sense when the next mandate arrives.

France is not the end of the story. It is the beginning of a new compliance model.

Choose Tradeshift as your global e-invoicing compliance partner.

Start your compliance journey with Tradeshift today.

If your scope is limited, you have less complex workflows, a small volume of e-Invoices or only need outbound in France only, Babelway may be a better fit. For broader, multi-country compliance and automation, Tradeshift is designed to scale with you.