Transposition under French law of the EU mandatory "withdrawal button" for online sales: Online merchants must be ready by 19 June 2026

Context

By an Order No. 2026-2 of 5 January 2026 (the "Order"), the French Government has transposed under French law the provisions of the EU Directive 2023/2673 on financial services (the "Directive"). The Directive requires merchants offering consumers the possibility to conclude distance contracts through an online interface to provide consumers with an online withdrawal feature.

Obligations of online merchants before the Directive

Pursuant to EU and French consumer laws, consumers benefit from a 14 days period to withdraw from a contract concluded at a distance, without having to justify their decision or bear any specific withdrawal costs. Until the adoption of the Directive, no specific information and/or formatting requirement was applicable for the exercise of this withdrawal right for online sales, despite the increasing portion of such sales in the EU in the last 10 years.

Online merchants therefore had to comply with the general requirement to provide to the consumers, prior to the conclusion of the distance sales, legible and readable information on the existence of their withdrawal right, its conditions, the time limit and the procedures for exercising such right, as well as a reproduction of the standard withdrawal form. Such information is generally provided in the terms and conditions of sale of the online merchant which are submitted to the consumers' acceptance prior to the conclusion of the sale.

In addition, the online merchant may (but is not required to) allow the consumers to complete and submit online, on its website, their withdrawal form. In this case, the online merchant must immediately send to the consumers an acknowledgement of receipt of their withdrawal on a durable medium.

New obligations of online merchants after transposition of the Directive

Online merchants will be required to make available to the consumers, at no cost for the latter, a feature on their website allowing them to exercise their withdrawal right before the expiry of the 14 days' period as from the delivery of the product.

The characteristics of such withdrawal feature have been further specified by a Decree adopted on the same day than the Order. To be compliant, the withdrawal feature must be:

• clearly identifiable to the consumer by being labelled with the term "Withdraw from the contract here" or by a similar and unambiguous expression;
• visibly displayed on the merchant's website, and be directly and easily accessible to the consumer;
• available to the consumer for the entire duration of the withdrawal period.

The purpose of the withdrawal feature is to enable the consumer to send an online declaration of withdrawal to inform the online merchant of his/her decision to withdraw from the sale. The fields of this online declaration are also defined by the Decree, as well as the process which must be followed by the online merchant to acknowledge the consumer's withdrawal.

Sanctions for non-compliance

Failure to comply with the obligation to implement a compliant online withdrawal feature exposes online merchants to an administrative fine of a maximal amount of €75,000 for legal persons.

Deadline and challenges to be anticipated by the online merchants

The requirement to implement a withdrawal feature on online interfaces will be applicable in France by 19 June 2026. Online merchants must therefore prepare their websites to the implementation of this new feature, which may require the following steps to be undertaken:

• Close coordination with IT teams to incorporate and implement this online withdrawal feature in the IT infrastructure of the merchant's website. Such implementation will in principle require a design phase (the feature having to comply with the formatting requirements), the assessment of the backend and frontend implications of such feature, its articulation with the other website's APIs, as well as a testing phase of the feature to ensure its scalability and proper functioning. These development steps require this IT work to be carried out sufficiently in advance to meet the deadline of 19 June 2026.
• Verification with accounting/sales teams and external payment providers (e.g., Stripe or Adyen) that they will be able to process correctly and in due time the refunds to be made to the consumers exercising their withdrawal right through the online withdrawal feature. Under EU and French consumer laws, the refund of the product's price must be made without undue delay, and at the latest within 14 days from the receipt by the merchant of the consumer's decision to withdraw from the distance contract.
• Preparation with logistics teams or arrange/coordinate with logistics service provider(s), the handling of the returned products in the merchant or logistics service provider(s)' warehouse following the exercise of the consumers' withdrawal right. As the purpose of the Directive is to enable the consumers to exercise more easily their withdrawal right, online merchants may expect an increase in the withdrawals. Such increase may create logistics challenges, as consumers are required under EU and French consumer laws to return the goods without undue delay, and at the latest within 14 days following the communication to the merchant of their withdrawal decision. Online merchants should therefore ensure with their logistics teams or providers that the warehouses will have enough capacity to process and handle the returned products, and that their warehouses management system appropriately record and track such returns.
• Review the drafting of the B2C contractual documentation to ensure that proper and clear reference is made to the new online withdrawal feature in the information provided to the consumers and the means available to them to exercise their legal withdrawal right.

Authored by Mikael Salmela, Floriane Cadio de Kermainguy, and Charlotte Haddad.