Last updated 13 August 2026 · 14 figures · 11 primary sources
Italian firms wait longer, and more often, than most of their Western European peers — but the country's own payment-delay trend has narrowed for most of two decades.
The Italian payment clock
Share of Italian companies paying B2B invoices on time in Q4 2025 — down 1.7 points on the year, and enough to drop the country from 16th to 21st place in Europe.
Source: CRIBIS/D&B Payment Study 2026
of Italian firms set B2B payment terms under 30 days — against 65% across Western Europe
Atradius, 2026 →say late payment has left them behind on paying their own suppliers — among the highest of 20 European countries, within three points of top-ranked Germany (70%)
Intrum, 2026 →rise in Italian business insolvencies in 2025, to 12,093 cases — with a further 5% rise forecast for 2026
Allianz Trade, 2026 →Debitura Collection Risk Score
An Italian B2B receivable sits in the middle of the world's collection-risk spectrum. Allianz Trade ranks Italian collection procedure 24th of 52 economies for complexity, and the World Justice Project places Italian civil justice 53rd of 143 countries — weaker on every score component than Germany. Italy is the first of the countries covered so far to fall in the Moderate band: the typical problem for a creditor is a slower, more institutional recovery process rather than simply a late invoice.
Italien
Based on 4 of 4 sources
Italy's Allianz Trade Collection Complexity Score for 2026 — ranked 24th of 52 economies and rated "High" complexity, little changed since 2014
Allianz Trade, 2026 →the chance of collecting an overdue Italian B2B debt, on Atradius Collections' own assessment in its international debt collection handbook
Atradius Collections, 16th ed. →Score components
| Publisher | Published value | Mapped 1–10 |
|---|---|---|
| Coface Country Risk Assessment | Bretrieved 6 August 2026 | 6.1 |
| Allianz Collection Complexity Score 2026 | 46 / 100Statistical Appendix 1, p. 24 | 4.6 |
| World Bank B-READY 2025 | 66.7 avgDispute Resolution 64.5 + Business Insolvency 68.9, Appendix B p. 43 | 3.3 |
| WJP Rule of Law Index 2025 — Civil Justice | 0.56ranked 53rd of 143 | 4.4 |
The Debitura Collection Risk Score is an editorial comparison index covering 177 countries, built from four public, independently published sources and shown on a 1–10 scale where 10 is the highest collection risk. It displays in four bands: Low below 3.5, Moderate 3.5–4.9, Elevated 5.0–6.4, High 6.5 and above. Italy's 4.6 falls in the Moderate band — the first of the countries in this report to do so.
Each available component is mapped onto the common 1–10 scale with a fixed linear mapping, and the score is the simple average of whichever components exist. Coface: A1=1.0, A2=2.3, A3=3.6, A4=4.9, B=6.1, C=7.4, D=8.7, E=10.0. Allianz: max(1, score ÷ 10). B-READY: max(1, (100 − the average of the Dispute Resolution and Business Insolvency topic scores) ÷ 10). WJP: max(1, (1 − score) × 10). A country needs at least two of the four to receive a score. For Italy, all four are available: (6.1 + 4.6 + 3.3 + 4.4) ÷ 4 = 4.6.
Italy is covered by all four score components — unlike Germany, which is not among the World Bank's 101 B-READY economies. This is a coincidence of dataset coverage, not a sign that Italy's data is stronger or weaker overall.
This is not a credit rating. The Debitura Collection Risk Score is an editorial comparison index for a statistics and journalism product. It is not a credit rating, not a probability of default, not a measure of any individual company's creditworthiness, and not legal or financial advice. It is not produced by a regulated rating agency and must not be used as a substitute for one.
Payment behaviour
Italian companies set some of the longest payment terms Atradius measures in Western Europe, and collect against them more slowly than any other market in the region. Two in five Italian firms set terms under 30 days, against nearly two in three across the wider region.
of Italian companies collect within 30 days of invoicing (DSO) — the weakest share of any Western European market Atradius surveys, against 62% regionally
Atradius, 2026 →of Italian B2B sales are made on credit, well above the 52% share across Western Europe
Atradius, 2026 →of Italian companies carry between 31% and 60% of their B2B invoices overdue at any time
Atradius, 2026 →of Italian companies write off 5–10% of annual B2B sales as bad debt, against 6% across the region
Atradius, 2026 →The longer arc
The series runs from 20.4 days in 2008 to 8.8 days in 2024, with periodic setbacks along the way — a rise to 21.3 days in 2009 and a pandemic-era rebound to 13.4 days in 2020 among them. OECD → The improvement sits alongside a persistently slow payment culture on the survey measures above: Italy's long-run delay has fallen, but the country still collects more slowly today than its Western European neighbours on every current-year measure this page tracks.
OECD Financing SMEs and Entrepreneurs 2026, Table 22.1, 2008–2024
Source: OECD Financing SMEs and Entrepreneurs 2026, Table 22.1, p. 129 · the 2007 column is blank for this row in OECD's own table; the series begins in 2008.
Why invoices go late
71% of Italian respondents name customer cash-flow problems as the reason B2B invoices arrive late, far ahead of banking delays (15%), a complex payment process (14%) and internal approval delays (14%). Atradius 2026 → 28% of Italian companies report no overdue B2B invoices at all, but 24% carry between 31% and 60% of invoices overdue at any time — a materially heavier tail than the 21% Western Europe reports for the same band. Atradius →
Source: Atradius Payment Practices Trends, Statistical Appendix, Western Europe 2026, p. 7
What late payment costs
Italy's payment pressure travels the same way it does everywhere: from the invoice that runs past its term, to the receivable that sits unpaid for months, to the supplier further down the chain who is paid late in turn.
The cascade
Italy reports one of the highest supplier-cascade rates of the 20 European countries Intrum surveys — within three points of top-ranked Germany (70%) — a heavier version of a pattern visible across the continent.
of Italian firms set B2B payment terms under 30 days, against 65% across Western Europe — most Italian invoices start on a longer clock. Atradius →
of Italian companies carry 31% to 60% of their B2B invoices overdue at any given time — a heavier tail than the Western European average. Atradius →
say the resulting cash squeeze has left them behind on paying their own suppliers — among the highest of Intrum's 20 European markets, just three points off top-ranked Germany. Intrum →
Where the pressure lands
Italian firms name reduced cash available for operations as the leading impact of customer payment risk on working capital, ahead of higher financing needs, delayed payments to their own suppliers and difficulty with cash-flow planning. Atradius → Companies also report managing the risk differently to their regional peers: Italian firms lean on staying close to customers and monitoring payment behaviour, where Western European firms more often build financial buffers or automate collections. Intrum →
Source: Intrum European Payment Report 2026, p. 24
Italy and its region
Every row below compares Italy with the benchmark or neighbouring markets the publisher itself reports; figures from different publishers are not combined.
Each row uses a single publisher and that publisher's own regional aggregate or peer grouping, so the bars within a row are directly comparable. Rows are not comparable with one another: Atradius surveys companies in Western Europe, CRIBIS D&B measures settled payment records rather than survey responses, and Intrum surveys 20 European markets. Bar lengths are drawn proportional to the percentage shown; no figure has been rescaled, imputed or harmonised across sources.
The CRIBIS row shows Italy against the three markets closest to it in CRIBIS's own Southern European grouping (Spain, Croatia and Serbia), rather than the best-known European markets, because that is the comparison the publisher itself draws.
Insolvenz
Italian bankruptcy declarations have swung between double-digit falls and double-digit rises over the past decade. Two independent sources — Eurostat's register-based index and Allianz Trade's insolvency count — agree that 2025 marked one of the steepest rises in that series.
The swing
The 2025 increase of 7.8% is slower but still positive, following a 20.3% fall in 2022 and a 31.7% drop in 2020. Eurostat → Allianz Trade counts 12,093 Italian business insolvencies in 2025 — up 26% year-on-year — and forecasts a further 5% rise to 12,750 in 2026, putting around 50,000 jobs directly at risk, before easing to 12,300 in 2027. Allianz Trade →
Eurostat sts_rb_a, industry, construction and market services, 2015–2025
Source: Eurostat, dataset sts_rb_a (BKRT, NACE B-S_X_O_S94, unadjusted, percentage change on previous year), geo=IT · extract dated 6 August 2026.
For a creditor
Three things the Italian figures on this page imply for anyone holding a receivable from an Italian customer.
Only 45% of Italian companies collect within 30 days of invoicing, against 62% across Western Europe, and only 40% set terms that short to begin with, against 65% regionally. Together, that means a materially larger share of an Italian receivable sits outstanding beyond a month than the regional norm. Atradius →
43.4% of Italian companies paid on time in Q4 2025 — down from a year earlier, and enough to drop Italy from 16th to 21st place in Europe's punctuality ranking. CRIBIS → What separates the ordinary from the concerning is the tail: 24% of Italian companies carry 31% to 60% of invoices overdue at any time, a heavier share than the Western European norm. Atradius →
The general limitation period for an Italian commercial claim is ten years (Civil Code, Article 2946), among the longest of the countries covered so far, and statutory default interest is reviewed every six months rather than fixed at a single published rate. Atradius → The trade-off is speed: a contested case typically runs 10 to 12 months, and a judicial liquidation, if it comes to that, takes six to seven years on average — so an Italian claim rarely disappears quickly, but rarely resolves quickly either. Atradius →
Italy statistics library
14 curated figures from 11 primary sources. Each carries its publisher, year and exact locator, and each has a permanent anchor you can link to directly.
43.4% of Italian companies paid their B2B invoices on time in Q4 2025, down 1.7 points year-on-year — a fall that dropped Italy from 16th to 21st place in Europe's punctuality ranking and from 24th to 28th worldwide. Severe delays of more than 90 days eased slightly, down 0.3 points to 4.1%.
CRIBIS/D&B Payment Study 2026 (22nd edition) CRIBIS D&B · article section 'Payments: punctuality worsens in Italy, but severe delays decrease'
Only 40% of Italian companies set B2B payment terms under 30 days, against 65% across Western Europe as a whole; 42% grant 31-60 days, 15% grant 61-90 days and 3% grant more than 90 days.
Atradius Payment Practices Trends Atradius · Statistical Appendix, Western Europe 2026, 'Average payment terms', Region-Market table, p. 4
Italy has the weakest Days Sales Outstanding profile of the Western European markets Atradius surveys: only 45% of companies collect within 30 days, against 62% regionally; 10% of Italian companies write off 5-10% of annual B2B sales as bad debt, against 6% across the region.
Atradius Payment Practices Trends Atradius · Statistical Appendix, Western Europe 2026, 'Annual average Days Sales Outstanding (DSO)', p. 6; 'Share of annual B2B sales written off as bad debt', p. 7
Italian firms make 66% of B2B sales on credit, well above the 52% share across Western Europe. 28% of Italian companies report no overdue B2B invoices at all, but 24% carry between 31% and 60% of invoices overdue — and customer cash-flow problems are the most-cited reason, named by 71% of respondents.
Atradius Payment Practices Trends Atradius · Statistical Appendix Western Europe 2026, 'Share of total B2B sales by payment type', p. 3; Payment Practices Barometer, survey results for Italy 2026, 'Key insights', p. 4
67% of Italian businesses say late payment from customers has left them behind on paying their own suppliers in turn — among the highest of the 20 European countries Intrum surveys, within three points of top-ranked Germany (70%); 66% say they now use AI in their payment or collections processes, behind only Spain (70%) and level with France and Greece.
Intrum European Payment Report 2026 Intrum · European Payment Report 2026, p. 14 (supplier-cascade chart); p. 24 (AI-usage chart)
Business insolvencies in Italy jumped 26% year-on-year to 12,093 cases in 2025 and are forecast to rise a further 5% to 12,750 in 2026, before easing to 12,300 in 2027; the 2026 forecast puts around 50,000 jobs directly at risk.
Allianz Global Insolvency Outlook 2026 Allianz Trade / Allianz Research · Global Insolvency Outlook 2026, statistical appendix, Italy row, p. 26; jobs-at-risk figure, Figure 12, p. 15
Italian bankruptcy declarations swung from a 31.7% fall in 2020 to an 18.5% rise in 2021, a 20.3% drop in 2022, then rose again: +7.0% in 2023, +19.0% in 2024 and +7.8% in 2025.
Eurostat — business registrations and bankruptcies Eurostat · dataset sts_rb_a — indic_bt=BKRT, nace_r2=B-S_X_O_S94, s_adj=NSA, unit=PCH_SM, geo=IT; extract dated 6 August 2026
OECD's B2B payment-delay series for Italy shows the average delay falling from 20.4 days in 2008 to 8.8 days in 2024, despite periodic upticks including a rise to 21.3 days in 2009 and a pandemic-era rebound to 13.4 days in 2020.
OECD Financing SMEs and Entrepreneurs 2026 OECD · Table 22.1 'Scoreboard for Italy', row 'Payment delays, B2B (all firms)', p. 129
Italy scores 46 out of 100 on the Allianz Collection Complexity Score 2026, ranked 24th of 52 economies and rated 'High' complexity — essentially unchanged from 49 in 2022, 49 in 2018 and 53 in 2014.
Allianz Collection Complexity Score 2026 Allianz Trade / Allianz Research · Collection Complexity Score 2026, Statistical Appendix 1 'Overview of ranking, score, ratings and sub-ratings by country', p. 24
Coface rates Italy's Country Risk Assessment at B, the weakest of the countries in this report assessed so far (Germany A3, United States A2, Poland A3).
Coface Country Risk Map Coface · interactive dashboard, Italy country pop-up, retrieved 6 August 2026
The World Bank's B-READY 2025 survey scores Italy 64.5/100 on Dispute Resolution and 68.9/100 on Business Insolvency (average 66.7); its underlying data estimate 600 calendar days for a first-instance commercial court judgment, attorney and court fees of 3.5% and 0.3% of the claim value, and liquidation costs equal to 12% of the estate (20% for reorganisation).
World Bank B-READY 2025 World Bank · Table B1.1, Appendix B, p. 43; granular figures from the underlying EconomyAnswer dataset, sheets 08_Dispute_Resolution and 10_Business_Insolvency
The World Justice Project ranks Italy 53rd of 143 countries on the Civil Justice factor (score 0.56) and 34th of 143 on the overall Rule of Law Index (score 0.66, down 0.5% and two ranks year-on-year).
World Justice Project Rule of Law Index 2025 WJP · Civil Justice factor score and rank, 19b_WJP_CivilJustice-2025_143-countries.json (key 'Italy'); overall score and rank, Rule of Law Index 2025 full report, p. 11
Statutory default interest on an overdue Italian commercial debt is reviewed every six months under Legislative Decree No. 192 of 9 November 2012 — Atradius Collections' handbook does not publish the resulting rate. The general limitation period for a commercial claim is 10 years (Civil Code, Article 2946), and Atradius rates the chance of collecting an Italian B2B debt at 50-75%.
Atradius International Debt Collection Handbook (16th ed.) Atradius Collections · International Debt Collection Handbook, 16th edition, Italy chapter, sections 1.2 'Interest' and 1.4 'Prescription', p. 7; collection prospect, p. 6
An Italian court typically issues a payment injunction (decreto ingiuntivo) within 15 to 30 days, and an uncontested case runs 10 to 12 months on average — rising to two to three years if the case is complex or contested. If it goes to judicial liquidation, the average procedure takes six to seven years to complete.
Atradius International Debt Collection Handbook (16th ed.) Atradius Collections · International Debt Collection Handbook, 16th edition, Italy chapter, section 3.6 'Expected time frame', p. 9; section 5.4 'Expected time frame', p. 11
Get help
If you are chasing an overdue invoice from an Italian customer rather than researching the market, our Italy page covers how recovery works locally, who handles it and what it costs.
Source: Atradius International Debt Collection Handbook, 16th edition, Italy chapter, p. 7
Method and sources
The score is an editorial comparison index built from four public, independently published sources. For each country we take whichever of the four are available, map each onto a common 1–10 scale using a fixed linear mapping, and take the simple average. A country needs at least two of the four to receive a score. Scores run 1 to 10, where 10 is the highest collection risk, and display in four bands: Low below 3.5, Moderate 3.5–4.9, Elevated 5.0–6.4, High 6.5 and above.
Mappings: Coface Country Risk Assessment A1=1.0, A2=2.3, A3=3.6, A4=4.9, B=6.1, C=7.4, D=8.7, E=10.0 (160 countries). Allianz Collection Complexity Score max(1, score ÷ 10) (52 economies). World Bank B-READY max(1, (100 − the average of the Dispute Resolution and Business Insolvency topic scores) ÷ 10) (101 economies). WJP Rule of Law Index Civil Justice factor max(1, (1 − score) × 10) (143 countries). Italy is covered by all four: (6.1 + 4.6 + 3.3 + 4.4) ÷ 4 = 4.6.
This is not a credit rating. It is an editorial comparison index for a statistics and journalism product — not a credit rating, not a probability of default, not a measure of any individual company's creditworthiness, and not legal or financial advice. It is not produced by a regulated rating agency and must not be used as a substitute for one.
Every figure on this page is drawn from one of the eleven primary sources listed below, extracted with an exact page, chart or dataset locator, and published only where that locator was verified in the source file itself. Figures from different publishers are reported side by side rather than merged: Atradius, Intrum, CRIBIS D&B and OECD each survey or measure different samples with different definitions, and their numbers are not interchangeable.
The headline figures at the top of this page come from Atradius's 2026 Western Europe wave (210 Italian respondents, fieldwork Q1–Q2 2026) and CRIBIS D&B's Q4 2025 settled-payment release. Atradius's 2026 survey states explicitly that comparisons with previous editions are not possible, so its Italian figures are shown as a single year rather than a trend; the OECD and Eurostat series exist precisely to cover that gap with genuine multi-year data.
Known gaps for Italy. EOS European Payment Practices does not cover Italy, so this page has no dunning-digitalisation figure of the kind shown on the Germany page. Atradius Collections' handbook states that Italian statutory default interest is revised every six months by decree but does not publish the resulting rate — this page reports the mechanism and does not invent or substitute a number. The OECD's "payment delays, B2B" series for Italy has no data point for 2007 in the source table; the series used here begins in 2008, correcting an earlier internal data-inventory note that described it as starting in 2007.
| Source | Publisher | Year | Italian coverage |
|---|---|---|---|
| Atradius Payment Practices Trends — Italy & Western Europe | Atradius | 2026 | 210 Italian respondents plus the Western Europe statistical appendix |
| Intrum European Payment Report 2026 | Intrum | 2026 | 8,385 companies across 20 European countries including Italy |
| CRIBIS/D&B Payment Study 2026 (22nd edition) | CRIBIS D&B | 2026 (Q4 2025 data) | Italian on-time payment rate within a 37-country release |
| OECD Financing SMEs and Entrepreneurs 2026 | OECD | 2026 | Italy scoreboard, Table 22.1, 2007–2024 |
| Eurostat — business registrations and bankruptcies | Eurostat | annual series through 2025 | Italian bankruptcy declaration index, 2015–2025 |
| Allianz Global Insolvency Outlook 2026 | Allianz Trade / Allianz Research | 2026 | Italian insolvency counts 2023–2027 and jobs at risk |
| Allianz Collection Complexity Score 2026 | Allianz Trade / Allianz Research | 2026 | Score component B — Italy 46/100, ranked 24th of 52 |
| Atradius International Debt Collection Handbook (16th ed.) | Atradius Collections | 16th edition, 2024 | Italian interest mechanism, limitation period, court timeframes and collection prospects |
| Coface Country Risk Map | Coface | retrieved 6 August 2026 | Score component A — Italy rated B |
| World Bank B-READY 2025 | World Bank | 2025 | Score component C — Dispute Resolution and Business Insolvency topic scores, plus granular court and insolvency-cost data |
| World Justice Project Rule of Law Index 2025 | World Justice Project | 2025 | Score component D — Italy's Civil Justice factor 0.56, ranked 53rd of 143 |
13 August 2026 — public launch of this page alongside the global report.
7 August 2026 — first publication of the Italy country report. 14 figures from 11 primary sources, plus all four Collection Risk Score components. This page is updated in place; new editions replace the content at this URL rather than creating a new year-specific page.