PPF (Public Invoicing Portal)

The PPF is the French State platform that centralises the directory of recipients and the invoicing data destined for the tax administration.

Definition

The Public Invoicing Portal (Portail Public de Facturation, PPF) is the public component of France's mandatory B2B domestic e-invoicing scheme.

Its role has changed over time: originally planned as a free platform able to issue and receive invoices, it has been refocused on the functions of central directory and data concentrator, with issuance and receipt handled by the registered private platforms.

Role in the scheme

The PPF performs several structural missions:

• maintaining the central directory that routes each invoice to the recipient's platform;
• registering the partner dematerialisation platforms (PDP);
• concentrating invoicing and e-reporting data for transmission to the DGFiP (French tax authority).

How it works

Businesses do not connect directly to the PPF to exchange invoices: they go through a registered PDP. These platforms query the PPF directory to know where to deliver an invoice, then push the relevant tax data back to the portal (invoice extracts, lifecycle statuses, e-reporting data).

The PPF thus acts as the administration's centralisation point, ensuring consistency of flows at national level.

Good to know

The PPF's scope was redefined during the reform: the State decided to stop offering a free public invoice issuance/receipt service, leaving that role to the PDPs, and to focus the portal on the directory and data collection. The roll-out timetable is set by French legislation and applies in stages according to company size.