BANKING LAW · ADVISORY & LITIGATION

Banking Litigation Lawyers in France

Law that rises to your ambitions.

Deposit accounts, loan agreements, payment fraud: banking law is as broad as it is technical. Our English-speaking lawyers advise and litigate for clients in France and abroad.

Your first consultation, refunded*
+33 9 83 68 80 80 (standard rate)
* The first consultation costs a flat €69 excl. VAT (€82.80 incl. VAT). If you then entrust your case to MUSE, it is automatically credited against your first invoice. For a one-off consultation, you receive clear oral advice and/or a written summary, depending on how we meet.
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The collective in banking law

A collective of independent banking lawyers in Lyon

We are a collective of independent lawyers, skilled across many fields and united around a fully independent online platform. You get the expertise you are looking for, real-time follow-up of your case, and direct contact with your lawyer — no intermediaries.

Independence Expertise Confidentiality
€1.3bn
lost to payment fraud in France every year
$9.3bn
lost to crypto-asset fraud worldwide in 2024 — up 66% in one year
5,000+
crypto-assets in circulation worldwide
What we handle

Loans, charges, fraud, guarantees, crypto-assets

Bank loans

Mortgages, consumer credit, business loans, overdrafts: complex agreements that call for a trained eye.

Bank charges

Charges applied in breach of your fee schedule, or commissions with no supporting basis, can often be recovered.

Payment fraud

Fraud techniques evolve faster than the security systems meant to stop them — from card fraud to fake bank advisers.

Guarantees & security

Personal guarantees, pledges, mortgages: French security law is full of technical defences a guarantor can raise against the lender.

Crypto-assets & NFTs

A fast-moving, lightly regulated market with new players — often offshore — and a sharply higher risk of fraud.

Decisions we've obtained

Proof in the rulings: see the decisions obtained by the collective in banking cases — payment fraud, crypto-assets, time bars, debt assignments.

Before, during and after signature

Bank loans

French loan law blends general contract law with banking regulation. The first checkpoint is the lender's duty to warn, inform and advise before granting credit.

The loan itself must then comply with strict rules: the all-in annual rate (the French TEG/TAEG), the way interest is applied, usury ceilings, and the impact of currency variation.

Vigilance matters just as much once the loan is running. Missed instalments expose you to acceleration — the bank calling in the whole loan at once. React immediately: seek a suspension or rescheduling of repayments before you face returning the entire capital, plus heavy penalties.

The collective's advice

Act on the first missed payment. A rescheduling negotiated in time always beats an acceleration suffered.

Interest, overdraft charges, commissions

Bank charges

French credit institutions provide three services: deposit accounts, credit and means of payment (Article L. 311-1 of the Monetary and Financial Code). In return they charge fees under many names: interest, overdraft charges, commissions and more.

Some fees are set freely in standard-form fee schedules; others are strictly capped by law.

Checking your statements against the contract and the law often reveals abusive practices — sometimes charges with no basis at all. You can then claim their reimbursement.

When payments are hijacked

Payment fraud

Payment fraud costs French account holders around €1.3 billion every year. Cheques are the most-abused instrument, followed by bank cards and credit transfers — including the "fake bank adviser" scam.

Keep your payment instruments and their security credentials to yourself — PINs, passwords, one-time codes. Never share them with anyone, even someone calling in your bank's name.

Yet the banks' own security systems are not beyond reproach:

  • Transactions above the authorised limits for a given type of operation;
  • Inconsistent operations — unusual amounts, new payees, payments abroad;
  • IT failures left unaddressed — unknown IP addresses, no preventive freeze on the payment instruments.
How we proceed
01Audit & freeze
02Formal challenge to the bank
03Criminal complaint
04Court action for reimbursement

Assert your rights and claim back the fraudulent transactions on your accounts: under French law, the burden of proof lies with the bank.

Defending the guarantor

Personal guarantees, pledges, mortgages…

The personal guarantee — cautionnement — secures more than 80% of French loans. Defending a guarantor means working through a long and technical list of checkpoints, several of them reshaped by the ordinance of 16 September 2021, in force since 1 January 2022:

  • Defences inherent in the principal debt;
  • A guarantee disproportionate to your means;
  • Failure to warn the guarantor;
  • Defective statutory wording in the deed;
  • Failure to provide the guarantor with annual information;
  • Acceleration not enforceable against the guarantor, and more.

Alongside this flagship security come pledges over receivables, shares, businesses or bank accounts, as well as mortgages. Each follows strict formalities of its own — and each deserves legal scrutiny from negotiation through to enforcement.

New assets, new risks

Crypto-assets & NFTs

Cryptocurrency took off in the 2010s. There are now more than 5,000 crypto-assets, with a combined market value of $2.03 trillion*. Fraud has grown just as fast: in 2021, crypto-related theft jumped 600% worldwide, reaching $10.5 billion in losses against $1.5 billion in 2020.

The market keeps expanding, the scams keep getting more convincing, and the legal framework is still settling. Liability claims can be brought against platforms for their failings — all the more since the EU's MiCA regulation now requires them to hold a licence and imposes strict security and custody obligations.

* As at May 2021.

Frequently asked questions

Your rights against the bank

I'm the victim of bank fraud — can I get my money back?
Yes — that is the principle. The French Monetary and Financial Code requires the bank to refund unauthorised payment transactions immediately. To escape this, the bank must prove gross negligence on your part — and that burden rests on the bank, not on you. Speak to your lawyer straight away: even before blocking your card, notifying the bank or filing a complaint, every word you use counts, and a poorly worded statement can lock you out of later remedies.
How long do I have to challenge a fraudulent transaction?
Report the unauthorised transaction to your bank without delay and, at the latest, within thirteen months of the debit (Article L. 133-24 of the Monetary and Financial Code) — seventy days where the payee's provider is established outside the European Economic Area. This is a strict cut-off: once it passes, the challenge is no longer admissible. It is separate from the five-year limitation period that governs court action. Hence the value of an immediate written report, with a date you can prove.
The bank refuses, citing my "gross negligence" — is that the end of it?
No. French courts regularly reiterate that the burden of proof lies with the bank, which must show, among other things, that it authenticated the disputed transaction. One of the collective's lawyers has obtained several rulings against banks on this ground, including in "fake adviser" cases. See our Results page.
Spoofing: a "fake adviser" called me from my bank's own number. Am I at fault?
Not as a matter of principle. Where the fraudster displays your bank's number or visual identity (spoofing), the staging is designed to deceive a normally attentive customer — and French courts are reluctant to find gross negligence in that context. One of the collective's lawyers obtained a ruling against a bank in a fake-adviser case, by a 2026 decision of the Cour d'appel de Lyon (the Lyon Court of Appeal). Keep everything: the caller's number, timestamps, text messages, screenshots.
Should my bank have checked the payee's name before my transfer went out?
Yes — it now must. Since 9 October 2025, EU Regulation 2024/886 requires banks to run Verification of Payee on every SEPA credit transfer, standard or instant. Before you confirm the order, the bank must check that the IBAN matches the account holder's name, and alert you to any mismatch. A failure here is an additional ground of liability against the bank when a transfer is diverted.
Which bank charges can I dispute?
Any that breach your fee schedule or the law: miscalculated interest, unjustified overdraft charges, commissions with no supporting document, fees above the regulatory caps. An audit of your statements identifies what can be disputed — and recovered.
The APR on my loan is wrong — what does the bank risk?
An inaccurate or incomplete all-in annual rate (the French TAEG) — omitted costs, insurance left out, interest computed on a 360-day year — can cost the lender all or part of its right to interest: the contractual interest is then refunded or reduced in the proportion set by the court. The analysis calls for a figure-by-figure audit of the agreement and the amortisation schedule.
What is acceleration — and how do I avoid it?
Acceleration — déchéance du terme — is the lender's ultimate weapon: after missed instalments, the bank declares the entire outstanding capital immediately due, plus penalties — in principle after a formal demand has gone unanswered. Head it off by reacting to the very first incident: negotiate a suspension or rescheduling and, if needed, ask the court for grace periods under Article 1343-5 of the Civil Code, which can defer or spread the debt over up to two years.
I signed a personal guarantee — can I challenge it?
Quite often, yes. A commitment out of proportion to your income and assets, failure to warn you, defective statutory wording in the deed, failure to provide annual information: each of these can reduce your exposure, and sometimes discharge the guarantor entirely. Every case starts with a close audit of the signed documents.
My bank account has been seized — what can I do?
An account attachment — saisie-attribution — can be challenged before the enforcement judge within one month of its service on you. Several points are checked systematically: the validity of the deed and of its service, the existence of an enforceable title, the amounts claimed, and the protected minimum balance that must be left to you in any event. The collective acts for seized debtors and pursuing creditors alike.
My account on a crypto platform was hacked — what are my options?
Act on several fronts, fast. Under the EU's MiCA regulation, platforms must hold a licence and meet strict security and custody obligations — since 1 July 2026, only licensed providers may serve French clients. After a hack, the platform's liability can be engaged for failing those obligations. In parallel: file a criminal complaint without delay, preserve the evidence (statements, transaction addresses) so the assets can be traced and, if the funds passed through your bank account, claim reimbursement of the unauthorised transactions from your bank under the Monetary and Financial Code.

A dispute with your bank?

Our lawyers reply promptly — and in English.

+33 9 83 68 80 80
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