The rule most newcomers learn late
France does not simply let you run a company through your everyday account. The dedicated account rule is set by Article L.613-10 of the social security code, and it bites in two different ways.
If you sell goods, the dedicated business account is expected from the first euro of activity. If you are a consultant, therapist, tradesperson or other service provider working as a micro-entrepreneur, the obligation starts once your revenue has exceeded €10,000 for two consecutive calendar years. One year above the line does not trigger it. Two in a row does.
Worth knowing: the text does not demand a product labelled compte pro. A separate current account used only for the business can satisfy the requirement, as long as the bank allows business use and the account is opened in your name with the activity identified. Most banks, however, restrict personal accounts to personal use, which is why freelancers in France end up opening a proper professional account anyway.
There is a second deadline that shapes the choice of provider. Electronic invoicing becomes compulsory to receive for all businesses from September 2026, and compulsory to issue for smaller companies from September 2027. The practical consequence is that your account and your invoicing tool now have to talk to an approved platform, or you end up retyping invoices twice.
What the market actually offers
France has an unusually crowded field: domestic fintechs built around French paperwork, international players built around currency, and the old branch banks that still hold the credit relationship. Prices below come from the providers' own published plan pages.
| Provider | Model | Published price signal | French IBAN | Fits best | Watch out for |
|---|
| Qonto | Online bank with tiered plans | From €9 excl. VAT per month on annual commitment, €11 month to month | Yes | Small companies with several cardholders and approval rules | Extra users and higher tiers raise the bill quickly |
| Shine | ACPR-licensed payment institution | Free plan at €0 per month | Yes | Sole traders, micro-entrepreneurs, first account | Five free SEPA transfers per month, then €0.40 excl. VAT each |
| Indy | Account bundled with bookkeeping tools | Free plan | Yes | Auto-entrepreneurs who want free admin help | Built for simple structures, not payroll |
| Revolut Business | Fintech, four plans | Basic around €10, Grow around €35, Scale around €125 to €135 per month | EUR details, confirm issuance country | Import, export, multi-currency invoicing | Support and credit options are thin for French admin |
| Wise Business | Transfer-first account | Per-transaction fees, no monthly fee for basic use | EUR details may sit outside France | Paying overseas suppliers | Not a full bank, no overdraft |
| Airwallex | Global account | Plan and volume based, interbank FX rates | EUR local details | E-commerce, marketplace payouts | Pricing depends on volume you may not reach yet |
| BNP Paribas, Crédit Agricole, CIC | Branch networks | Case-by-case packages | Yes | Overdraft, equipment loans, cash and cheque deposits | Monthly bundles plus per-item charges, slower opening |
Two structural notes on the table. Shine is not a bank: it holds an ACPR payment institution licence, and client funds are ring-fenced at Société Générale rather than sitting on Shine's own balance sheet. Revolut and Wise are useful tools but not French deposit banks, so a loan or an authorised overdraft will still send you back to a branch.
Matching the account to your legal status
A micro-entrepreneur with two clients and no staff does not need the same account as a SASU billing a German manufacturer. Take the freelancer in Lyon who invoices three local clinics and one publisher in Belgium. A free plan with a French IBAN covers the clinics, and the Belgian invoice goes through a multi-currency tool with an interbank rate. Paying €35 a month for the full stack would be waste, since nothing in that activity needs approvals or 20 cardholders.
Now take a four-person agency in Bordeaux preparing to hire. Here the account becomes an internal control system: spend limits per cardholder, a second approver for anything above a set threshold, exports the expert-comptable can digest, and a banking feed that reconciles against the invoice tool without manual entries. That is where a mid-tier Qonto plan earns its fee, and where a €0 plan quietly costs the bookkeeper's hourly rate instead.
A third case matters too: the trader importing stock from outside the EU. Currency exposure, supplier payments in dollars, and marketplace payouts in several currencies push the decision toward Airwallex or Revolut, with a domestic account kept alongside for URSSAF, salaries and the landlord.
The capital deposit hurdle for new companies
Setting up a SASU, SARL, EURL or SAS means depositing share capital and obtaining a certificate before the company can be registered. Revolut runs this through a partner arrangement: the deposit step is quoted at 12 to 48 hours, and the KBIS extract arrives in around eight days on average. The eligibility conditions are narrow, though, since shareholders must reside in the EEA, at least one must live in France, and US citizens are excluded. A micro-entrepreneur skips the whole step.
If you are incorporating and the fintech route does not fit your shareholder mix, a branch bank or a notaire handles the same deposit. Ask about the timing before you promise a launch date to a client.
Costs that rarely appear on the pricing page
Monthly subscription is the visible number. The rest hides in usage. Additional cardholders on a per-user plan. Instant SEPA transfers priced separately from standard ones. Cash deposits, which most online players simply do not accept, a genuine problem if your customers pay in notes. Cheque handling, which varies by provider and still matters in France. Currency conversion above a monthly allowance, where Revolut applies a markup once you pass the limit included in your plan. And the annual commitment discount, which becomes a penalty if you switch after six months.
Cheques deserve a sentence of their own. Plenty of French clients, and more than a few insurers, still settle by paper. Verify the deposit route before signing, because an account that cannot take a cheque pushes you back to a branch counter.
A workable sequence
Confirm your status first, since it decides whether the dedicated account is already mandatory or still optional. Then list the flows you actually have, not the ones you imagine: incoming cheques, cash, foreign clients, marketplace payouts, prélèvement SEPA mandates for subscriptions.
Open one account and run it in parallel for a full month before closing anything. Migrate the mandates in a fixed order: URSSAF, then your bank for loan repayments, then suppliers, then clients. Update your RIB everywhere it appears, including your website footer and your invoicing template. Check that your invoicing tool is compatible with an approved e-invoicing platform well before the deadlines land.
Keep your expert-comptable in the loop on exports. A bank feed that produces clean categorised entries saves a couple of hours each month, and that saving usually outweighs the difference between a free plan and a paid one.
Start with last month's statement. Count the transaction types, note whether a cheque or a cash deposit appears anywhere, and check whether any client sits outside the euro area. That short list will narrow the field to two or three providers faster than any comparison table, including this one.
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