France

Using Shopify POS in France and Europe This post is outdated

As Shopify Partners in France, we would love to offer POS to our French clients. However, the French government has recently passed a set of laws on point of sale systems in an effort to reduce tax fraud, and they will be put into effect on January 2018.

Unfortunately, a lot of POS software out there enables merchants to permanently delete or edit transactions, enabling them to retrieve cash from the register in a way thats impossible for the tax authorities to trace back if they perform an audit. This is estimated to create of a loss of about 10 billion euros of tax money to the French government each year.

Therefore, stores will be required to use POS systems certified by Infocert, the organization who issues these certifications on behalf of the government. In a nutshell, for a POS system to get certified, Infocert needs to test the software and access the source code to make sure there is no way to delete transactions without keeping a trace, and therefore commit fraud. So POS systems who want to keep doing business in France are currently working to comply with the requirements to obtain certification.

For some official documentation on the matter, here http://www.nf525.com/images/plaquette-nf525.pdf is a PDF from Infocert which talks about this in more detail (the 2nd half is in English).

And here are the official texts from the French government (in French however):

Article 38 here http://www.assemblee-nationale.fr/14/projets/pl3096.asp
Article XIII here http://bofip.impots.gouv.fr/bofip/1298-PGP.html?ftsq=logiciel+caisse&identifiant=BOI-CF-COM-10-80-20140528

My research doesn't stop here, as I've also contacted Infocert themselves. In order for Infocert to provide certification, the POS software must be available in French and they must be provided with the software's documentation (also needed in French) and its source code. Furthermore, Infocert charges the software company 8,000 euros for this, plus a yearly certification renewal.

Needless to say, stores in France risk getting fined if they get audited and the tax authorities see they're not using a compliant POS system. And as we approach the 2018 deadline, Shopify can expect to get this complaint from storeowners in France as well as other European countries, as is the case in this thread and this one.

Shopify has recently included a POS section on its French website, which I think is misleading as store owners with no knowledge of these new POS laws will get very upset when they find out that the software will not be legal for use in France, or even worse if they get fined for this.

I hope that through this post other European users can share their experience and knowledge of POS laws in their countries, and that Shopify can take the necessary steps to make sure we can use the system here in Europe.

Cheers,
Michael