Chorus Pro, PPF, and PDP: What businesses need to know

• Chorus Pro, the PPF, and PDPs or “approved platforms” serve different users, perform different functions, and exist for different regulatory purposes. They’re not alternatives to one another.
• Since October 2024, the PPF acts as a central directory and data concentrator. It’s not a free business-to-business (B2B) invoicing portal, and businesses cannot use it as a substitute for an approved platform.
• Every business subject to France’s B2B e-invoicing mandate must select and contract with an approved platform for invoice exchange and e-reporting.
• Chorus Pro remains the reference platform for public-sector (B2G) invoicing and is not the general B2B public platform.

What is the difference between Chorus Pro, the PPF, and a PDP?
 

The three components serve entirely different users, perform different functions, and exist for different regulatory purposes. Mixing them up and using the terms interchangeably creates planning errors that are difficult to unpick later.

Chorus Pro is the public-sector invoicing environment. The PPF is state-run directory and tax-data concentration infrastructure. A PDP, or plateforme agréée (approved platform), is the business-facing exchange and compliance platform that VAT-registered businesses must use for domestic B2B e-invoicing and e-reporting in France.
 

The simplest way to visualise France’s e-invoicing architecture
 

Business systems connect through approved platforms. Approved platforms exchange invoice data with one another. The PPF directory helps determine the recipient’s routing address, and the PPF concentrates required data for the tax administration. Chorus Pro sits alongside this architecture, supporting transactions that involve public-sector entities.
 

What businesses may remember from France’s original reform model
 

Early guidance on France’s e-invoicing reform described a choice: use a registered private PDP or use the PPF as a free public invoicing portal. That framing appeared in project plans, vendor presentations, and procurement documents. Some of this is still circulating. If your organisation built early road maps around the assumption of a free government invoicing alternative, those assumptions need to be revisited.

How the PPF role was narrowed
 

In October 2024, the DGFiP — France’s public finance authority — announced a significant change to the PPF’s scope. The functions of directly issuing and receiving business invoices were removed. What remained, and what the 2025 legislative framework confirmed, is the PPF’s role as a central directory and government data concentrator. Business invoice exchange and the associated reporting obligations moved entirely to approved platforms.
 

What “PDP” and “approved platform” mean now
 

The term PDP — Plateforme de Dématérialisation Partenaire — was the original designation for registered private platforms under the reform. The administration now refers to these as plateformes agréées, meaning approved platforms.

Always verify any provider against the DGFiP’s current list of registered approved platforms rather than relying on historical accreditation records.

What Chorus Pro is designed to do
 

Chorus Pro is France’s established platform for invoices involving public-sector buyers — ministries, local authorities, hospitals, and public institutions. It handles invoice submission, receipt, and life cycle processing within public procurement. As the DGFiP has confirmed, Chorus Pro remains the reference platform for public-sector invoicing after 2026.
 

When a private business still needs Chorus Pro
 

If your business supplies goods or services to French public-sector entities, you need Chorus Pro regardless your B2B compliance obligations looks like. The two obligations sit alongside each other. If you supply both public-sector and private-sector customers, you’ll need Chorus Pro for one set of flows and an approved platform for the other. Whether your chosen approved platform can orchestrate Chorus Pro-connected flows alongside B2B exchange is a practical question worth raising early in your vendor evaluation.
 

Chorus Pro is not the general B2B public platform

The word “public” creates confusion here. Chorus Pro is a public-sector invoicing platform — its users are suppliers to government and public entities. The PPF is public infrastructure in a different sense: it operates in the background as directory and data concentration architecture. Neither is a public invoicing portal for ordinary business-to-business transactions. An invoice to a French municipality goes through Chorus Pro. An invoice to a French corporate buyer goes through an approved platform. The two are not substitutes for one another.

The PPF as France’s central invoice directory
 

Before an approved platform can route an invoice to its recipient, it needs to know where to send it. That’s the PPF directory’s function. Businesses register their routing information — e-invoicing addresses (the unique routing identifier used by approved platforms to deliver invoices to the correct recipient), legal entity identifiers, and establishment codes — and approved platforms query the directory to determine the correct destination for each invoice. Accurate SIREN (the unique nine-digit identifier assigned to every French business) and SIRET (the 14-digit code identifying each individual establishment within that business) numbers, correct legal entity records, and up-to-date routing registrations are prerequisites for invoice delivery. Gaps in directory data cause routing failures before a platform has even attempted transmission.
 

The PPF as a government data concentrator
 

Once an invoice has been exchanged through approved platforms, the PPF receives the regulatory data it needs on behalf of the DGFiP. Approved platforms transmit invoice data, transaction data for flows outside domestic B2B e-invoicing scope, and payment data for relevant service transactions. The PPF doesn’t carry the invoice — it receives the structured information that allows the tax administration to monitor VAT compliance and close the VAT gap (the discrepancy between VAT revenue owed and collected).
 

What businesses cannot rely on the PPF to do
 

The PPF is not a substitute for an approved platform. It doesn’t provide a direct-access invoicing interface for private sector B2B transactions, ERP integration, data remediation, or multinational mandate management. Businesses that assumed otherwise need to update their project plans.

However, the PPF does remain a central dependency in the national architecture. Your approved platform must be interoperable with it. Your directory records must be accurate before your go-live date. And the DGFiP monitors technical specifications, maintains a list of approved platforms, and publishes updates through official channels — staying current with those changes is not optional.

Core e-invoicing functions
 

An approved platform issues, receives, and transmits structured e-invoices on behalf of businesses. It validates mandatory fields and regulatory rules before submission, supports the authorised semantic and syntax formats — Factur-X, UBL, and CII — and converts formats where permitted. It exchanges invoices with other approved platforms and manages the required invoice life cycle statuses: sent, deposited, received, rejected, accepted, and paid. Approved platforms must meet the format, schema, and API requirements set out in the DGFiP’s B2B technical specifications and standards.

Core e-reporting functions
 

Beyond invoice exchange, an approved platform captures and transmits the transaction data that falls outside domestic B2B e-invoicing scope. That includes business-to-consumer (B2C) sales totals, cross-border B2B transactions, and applicable payment-status information. Submission frequencies and deadlines apply separately to e-reporting flows, and the data transmits through the PPF to the DGFiP automatically. Both obligations interact for businesses operating in France.

Being on the approved list doesn’t mean the platform is right for your business
 

A platform appearing on the DGFiP’s approved list means it has met the regulatory registration threshold. It does not mean it’s the right fit for your business. Implementation capacity, integration depth, security standards, transaction volume handling, and multinational road map all sit outside the approval criteria and need to be evaluated separately. Approval tells you a platform is eligible — it doesn’t tell you whether it can handle your ERP environment, your transaction volumes, or your compliance obligations beyond France.

Chorus Pro serves public sector flows. The PPF provides directory and data-concentration functions. Approved platforms handle business-facing B2B exchange and reporting. There is no free public alternative for ordinary B2B compliance. If your project plan was built on different assumptions, you must correct it.

Avalara E-Invoicing and Live Reporting connects business systems to France’s mandate requirements — handling structured invoice exchange, e-reporting, and life cycle status management without requiring separate country-by-country integrations. France can be managed alongside other national e-invoicing and live-reporting obligations, helping businesses operating across multiple markets avoid fragmented, point-solution approaches.

Supporting the invoice formats France requires — Factur-X, UBL, and CII — means fewer invalid or rejected invoices. ERP connectivity reduces manual invoice handling. Automated reporting lowers the risk of incomplete submissions. Central monitoring improves visibility across entities and countries. And a scalable architecture means expanding into markets with new mandates doesn’t require rebuilding from scratch.

Speak with Avalara about overcoming the challenges of France’s e-invoicing mandate.