What is the difference between a physical person and a legal entity ?

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Physical person

A physical person (or legally speaking, a natural person) is any living human being considered as a subject of rights and obligations.

A natural person can be recognised by several elements:

  • a family name (or several)

  • a first name (or several)

  • a home address (fixed for at least 6 months per year)

  • a nationality.

A natural person has a legal personality, which means that he or she has rights (e.g. voting rights) and duties (e.g. respect for others).

In France, to benefit fully and autonomously from their legal personality, a natural person must be of legal age (or emancipated) and not be placed under guardianship or curatorship.

Legal entity

Legal entity Under French law, a legal entity (or, legally speaking, a legal person) is a group with legal personality. Usually, a legal person consists of a group of natural persons gathered to accomplish something in common. This group may also include individuals and legal entities. It may also consist of only one element.

French law distinguishes between:

  • corporate entities in public law: the State, local authorities, public establishments, etc.

  • corporate entities in private law: most commonly private companies, civil companies (SC), economic interest groups and associations. Some corporate entities in private law are entrusted with the operation of services of general economic interest.

To recap a legal entity is :

  • A legal person is an entity which, although it’s not a natural person, has rights and responsibilities.

  • The legal person can be directly controlled by naturals persons or by others legals persons, which in turn can always find natural persons.

  • It can be subject to both public and private law.

  • If it meets the required criteria, it can proceed to share capital contribution with Qonto.

How to add a legal entity as a shareholder in Qonto

Before depositing your share capital with Qonto, you’ll be asked to define your company shareholders and their shareholding type :

To file the capital of a company with one or more legal entities as shareholders, you only need to provide :

  • The date/place of birth of the physical representative

  • A copy of the ID of the physical representative of each corporate entity.

We’ll take care of finding the proof of registration (synthèse INPI définitive, extrait Kbis or extrait INPI) and bylaws, so you don’t need to worry !

đź’ˇ Additional documents may be requested outside the registration process for legal entities outside-France