What is the PPF?
The PPF (Portail Public de Facturation) is the central government platform at the heart of France's mandatory e-invoicing reform. Operated by the AIFE (Agence pour l'Informatique Financière de l'État), the PPF serves as the backbone infrastructure that connects all participants in the French e-invoicing ecosystem.
The PPF's Role Has Changed
Early plans for the French e-invoicing reform positioned the PPF as both a routing hub and a platform that businesses could use directly to send and receive invoices. That changed significantly in October 2024: the PPF no longer handles the emission or reception of invoices. Its role is now purely infrastructural.
The PPF performs three critical functions:
1. Central Directory — The PPF maintains the official directory that maps every French business to its chosen Plateforme de Dématérialisation Partenaire (PDP). When a sender needs to deliver an invoice, the directory tells them which PDP the recipient uses.
2. Data Concentrator — All PDPs must transmit invoice data and e-reporting data to the PPF, which aggregates it and forwards it to the DGFiP (Direction Générale des Finances Publiques) for tax administration purposes.
3. Flow Concentrator — The PPF can act as an intermediary to route invoice flows between PDPs that don't have direct bilateral connections.
Architecture: The Y-Schema
France uses a Y-schema model. Invoices flow between businesses through accredited private platforms (PDPs), while a copy of the data flows upward to the PPF and then to the tax authority. This creates a Y-shaped data flow — two horizontal arms (sender PDP ↔ receiver PDP) and one vertical stem (PDP → PPF → DGFiP).
This is fundamentally different from Italy's centralised SDI model, where all invoices pass through a single government hub. France chose to distribute the processing load across private platforms while keeping centralised oversight.
Timeline and Current Status
The pilot phase went live on 27 February 2026, with real invoices being exchanged under production conditions. Key milestones:
As of early 2026, over 600,000 entities have registered their reception point in the PPF central directory.
What ERP Developers Need to Know
If you're building or maintaining ERP software for French businesses, the PPF is not something you integrate with directly for invoice exchange. Instead, you integrate with a certified PDP. However, the PPF's central directory affects your routing logic — you need to query it (via your PDP) to determine where to send invoices.
The accepted invoice formats are UBL, CII, and Factur-X. The PPF defines the data model requirements that all PDPs and their connected systems must follow.
Relation to Other French Infrastructure
The PPF replaces and extends the role previously played by Chorus Pro for B2G (business-to-government) invoicing. Chorus Pro handled public-sector invoicing since 2017; the PPF broadens this to cover all B2B transactions. Chorus Pro continues to exist for B2G flows but is being integrated into the broader PPF ecosystem.