General terms and conditions of sale (T&Cs) are mandatory for any French online store selling to individuals. Shopify provides generic templates, but they are drafted according to Anglo-Saxon law and do not cover the fourteen-day right of withdrawal, the legal guarantee of conformity, or the mandatory disclosures required by the Consumer Code.
This guide covers what a Shopify T&C document must contain to be valid in France, where to integrate them into Shopify, and at what point it becomes useful to pay for a legal expert. Our advice on the latter point is more cautious than that of most agencies.
Absent or non-compliant T&Cs expose you to an administrative fine of up to 15,000 euros for an individual and 75,000 euros for a company.
Summary
- T&Cs, legal notices, TOU: what the law requires
- What your T&Cs must contain
- Where and how to integrate them into Shopify
- Our position: start with the free generator
- The most common errors
- Selling outside of France
- Resources to read next
Where to start? If you are launching your store and looking for the fastest and least expensive solution, go directly to section 4. If you already have T&Cs and want to check their compliance, section 5 lists the gaps we most often encounter during our audits.
1. T&Cs, legal notices, TOU: what the law requires
These three documents are regularly confused. However, they address distinct obligations, and a serious French store must have all three.
- T&Cs (CGV) govern the commercial relationship: price, ordering, payment, delivery, withdrawal, and warranties. They are mandatory for B2C and must be accepted before payment.
- Legal notices (mentions légales) identify the site publisher: company name, legal form, capital, head office, trade registry (RCS) number, intra-community VAT, publication director, and hosting provider. Mandatory for all merchant sites.
- TOU (CGU) govern the use of the site itself: customer account, intellectual property, editorial responsibility. Shopify terms of use are not legally mandatory, but they are highly recommended as soon as there are customer accounts.
Added to this are two separate documents, often incorrectly treated as annexes to the T&Cs: the privacy policy, required by GDPR, and the return policy. The Shopify generator produces all three; we return to this in section 4.
2. What your T&Cs must contain
The Consumer Code sets out a list of information that must appear before the conclusion of the contract. Generic templates systematically omit some of this.
- The seller's identity. Company name, registered address, contact details, RCS number, and intra-community VAT.
- The essential characteristics of the products and the price including all taxes, with delivery charges displayed before validation.
- Accepted payment methods and the exact timing of the debit.
- Delivery times, with a deadline. The absence of a date makes you liable in the event of a delay.
- The fourteen-day right of withdrawal, its legal exceptions, and the standard withdrawal form that must be provided.
- Legal warranties of conformity (two years) and hidden defects. They are mandatory and cannot be excluded, regardless of what an imported template says.
- After-sales service and complaint procedures.
- The consumer mediator, whose contact details must be provided. This is the most frequent omission on French stores.
- Governing law and the competent jurisdiction in the event of a dispute.
The standard withdrawal form and the mediator's contact details are the two elements we see missing most often. Neither appears in the default Shopify templates.
Since June 19, 2026, a mere clause is no longer enough: your T&Cs must also indicate the existence and location of the online withdrawal functionality, which is now mandatory. We detail its setup in our 2026 return policy guide.
3. Where and how to integrate them into Shopify
Shopify provides a dedicated location for legal documents, distinct from standard pages. This is the one you should use, as it automatically feeds the links in the checkout tunnel.
- In the admin, open Settings, then Policies.
- Fill in each document in its field: Terms of service, Privacy policy, Refund policy, Shipping policy.
- Shopify then generates accessible pages and automatically adds links to the checkout footer.
- Then add these links to your theme's footer, because the checkout link is not enough: the information must be accessible before adding to the cart.
An important point regarding acceptance. Displaying a link to the T&Cs is not equivalent to acceptance. For consent to be enforceable, there must be an explicit, non-pre-checked checkbox at the time of order. Shopify offers this option natively in the payment settings, and it is disabled by default.
On the stores we audit, this is the most frequently neglected point: the T&Cs exist, but there is no proof that the customer accepted them.
4. Our position: start with the free Shopify generator
This is the advice we systematically give to brands starting out, and it is often surprising: use the free T&C and TOU generator from Shopify, and do not spend a single euro on a lawyer for your launch.
We are sometimes told that this is surprising coming from an agency. That is precisely why we say it: we have nothing to sell on this front, and we see too many creators spend 1,500 to 3,000 euros on legal drafting before having collected their first order.
The reasoning is economic before it is legal. Perfect T&Cs will never make you sell an extra item. They do not change your conversion rate, your average basket, or your acquisition cost. They protect you from risk, which is necessary, but they do not generate any revenue. Every euro spent on this at launch is a euro not going into your product photos, acquisition, or stock, where it would really perform.
Yet at launch, the real risk is low. A dispute requires customers, volume, and a claim. A brand making its first ten sales is not in that situation.
What the Shopify generator does well
- It is free, no paid account required, and produces a document in minutes
- It has been drafted and reviewed by legal professionals, which puts it far above a template copied from a forum
- It covers T&Cs and TOU in one go, which many creators wrongly treat separately
- It also exists in privacy policy and refund policy versions, which covers the complete legal foundation of a store
- The document remains editable: you receive it via email and can adjust it freely
Shopify itself indicates that these templates do not constitute legal advice. That is correct, and it does not detract from their utility as a starting point.
When you need to move on to something else
Our rule, after assisting over a hundred stores: the generator is sufficient as long as you sell a standard product, to individuals, in France. Three situations justify investing in custom drafting, and only one of them is related to revenue.
- Your product falls under an exception to the right of withdrawal. Perishable goods, unsealed cosmetics, personalized products, downloaded digital goods. A generic template will apply the fourteen days to everything, and you will be required to refund items that the law authorized you to refuse.
- Your sales model goes beyond the simple case. Subscription, pre-order, private sale, marketplace, B2B: each modifies the applicable clauses substantially, and no generator covers them.
- You have passed the threshold where a dispute costs more than prevention. At this stage, you have the revenue to absorb it, which was not the case at launch.
In all three cases, two additions must still be made by hand even with a custom document: the contact details for your consumer mediator, which depend on the organization you join, and the standard withdrawal form, which the law requires you to provide. No generator can guess these.
Summary of our position: free generator at launch, legal expert when the product or model requires it, never the other way around.
5. The most common errors
Here is what we see recurrently during our audits of French Shopify stores.
- T&Cs in English translated literally. They mention concepts that do not exist in French law and omit the legal guarantee of conformity.
- No acceptance checkbox at the time of ordering, therefore no proof of consent.
- The withdrawal form is absent, even though it must be provided to the consumer.
- The mediator is not designated, or mentioned without actionable contact details.
- Delivery charges revealed at the last moment, which contravenes the prior information obligation and increases cart abandonment.
- T&Cs are never updated after a change in catalog, shipping, or expansion into new countries.
- Delivery time formulated as "approximately" without a deadline, which does not satisfy the legal obligation.
The last point is worth emphasizing: compliance is not a one-time project. Every change in your offer requires a review, just like a price change.
6. Selling outside of France
As soon as you ship to another European Union country, the principle is that of consumer protection in their country of residence. Your French T&Cs are no longer sufficient if they contradict a more protective local rule.
Three topics to address as a priority: the VAT regime applicable according to the country and the distance selling threshold, mandatory disclosures specific to certain markets, and the language of the document, since a consumer may demand a document in their own language.
The invoicing and VAT aspect is what causes the most difficulties in practice: our article on Shopify invoicing covers compliant invoices, the OSS one-stop shop, and electronic invoicing. For the multi-country configuration itself, currencies, taxes, and languages, see Shopify Markets.
If you sell to professionals, the regime also changes: B2B T&Cs are not subject to consumer law and meet other requirements. Our Shopify B2B guide covers this case.
For support on bringing your store into compliance, you can contact us. We do not draft legal documents, but we audit the technical compliance of your tunnel and work with e-commerce legal specialists.
7. Resources to read next
Compliance is just one brick among many when launching or growing a store. Here are the guides to open depending on the stage you are at.
If you are launching your store
Legal documents can be settled in an hour with the generator. The rest of the launch requires more: our guide how to create a Shopify store covers all steps, and how much a Shopify site costs gives you the order of magnitude before you commit. If you are still hesitating about the plan, our Shopify prices page details the fees, including those you discover after the fact.
If you are selling internationally or B2B
These are the two cases where your standard T&Cs are no longer sufficient. Our article on Shopify invoicing deals with VAT, the OSS one-stop shop, and electronic invoicing, and Shopify Markets covers multi-country configuration. On the professional side, the Shopify B2B guide explains why consumer law does not apply and what that changes.
If your store is already running
Delivery charges displayed too late are both a breach of the information obligation and one of the primary causes of cart abandonment. The subject is covered in our conversion guide, and the recovery mechanics in our article on recovering abandoned carts. Regarding the payment tunnel itself, Shop Pay deserves an examination.
To go further
Our Shopify FAQ answers the most frequent questions in a few lines, the ultimate Shopify guide gives an overview, and all of our resources are gathered in our e-commerce guides.