Last updated 13 August 2026 · 16 figures · 12 primary sources
US small businesses wait a month for the money on a good day — Xero's nine-and-a-half years of data show how that's moved since 2017.
The US payment clock
Average time from invoice to cash for US small businesses in June 2026 — the latest reading in a monthly series running back to January 2017.
of US B2B invoices were paid late in 2025, against 52% paid on time and 5% written off as bad debt
Atradius, 2025 →chance of collecting a US B2B debt, on Atradius Collections' own assessment — the weakest prospect of the countries this report covers
Atradius Collections, 16th ed. →forecast rise in US business insolvencies in 2026, to 26,750 cases, putting around 428,000 jobs at risk
Allianz Trade, 2026 →Debitura Collection Risk Score
The United States is the only country in this report covered by all four Debitura Collection Risk Score components, and the picture they paint is mixed rather than uniformly easy or hard. Coface and the World Justice Project both place the US in the moderate range, but Allianz Trade rates US collection procedure "Very High" complexity — the 11th most complex of 52 economies — and a first-instance court judgment takes 627.5 days. The US sits in the second of the four risk bands: the legal framework is workable, but slow and state-by-state.
Estados Unidos
Based on 4 of 4 sources
"Very High" collection complexity on Allianz Trade's 2026 ranking — the 11th most complex of 52 economies, and markedly harder than Germany's 30/100
Allianz Trade, 2026 →the chance of collecting an overdue US 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 | A2retrieved 6 August 2026 | 2.3 |
| Allianz Collection Complexity Score 2026 | 56 / 100 — "Very High"Statistical Appendix 1, p. 24 | 5.6 |
| World Bank B-READY 2025 | 75.32 / 75.33 (avg 75.33)Dispute Resolution / Business Insolvency topic scores, p. 45 | 2.47 |
| WJP Rule of Law Index 2025 — Civil Justice | 0.62ranked 37th of 143 | 3.8 |
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. The United States' 3.5 sits at the low end of the Moderate band.
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 the United States: (2.3 + 5.6 + 2.47 + 3.8) ÷ 4 = 3.5.
The United States is the only country in this report with all four components available. Germany, by comparison, has three of four — the World Bank's B-READY 2025 dataset does not cover Germany.
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
US small businesses grant 45-day terms and then wait through a further 25 days of delay on top, on separate surveys. Xero's monthly national series — the longest single payment-behaviour time series Debitura holds for any country in this report — shows how little that pattern has shifted since 2017, once the 2021 stimulus-era dip washes out.
average payment term US suppliers grant on B2B sales, with roughly half of sales made on credit
Atradius Payment Practices Trends, 2025 →average payment delay nationally in 2025, from 24 days in manufacturing to 27 in financial services
Sidetrade Data Lake 2025 →of US companies paid their B2B invoices on time in Q4 2025, up 1.4 points year-on-year
CRIBIS D&B Payment Study 2026 →average late days in June 2026, the latest reading in Xero's 114-month national series
Xero Small Business Insights →Nine and a half years of the same June snapshot
Xero's US series starts in January 2017. Reading the same month — June — every year removes seasonal noise: late days ran 8.6–10.1 days from 2017 to 2020, fell to 5.8 days in June 2021 during the stimulus-era liquidity surge, then rebuilt to 9.1–9.5 days by 2023–2024 before easing to 8.4 and 8.3 days in the two most recent Junes. Xero → Separately, the OECD's own scoreboard puts the share of domestic B2B invoices overdue at 50% in 2024, down from 55% in 2023 — a different unit (share of invoices, not days) that should not be read alongside the Xero series above. OECD →
Xero Small Business Insights, June reading each year, 2017–2026
Source: Xero Small Business Insights, US_detailed_results workbook · June reading of each year chosen to hold the month constant across the series.
Why invoices go late
Liquidity issues are the most-cited reason US customers pay late, named by 45% of respondents, ahead of payment-process delays (33%), supply-chain disruptions (26%) and invoice disputes (23%). Atradius 2025 → 52% of US B2B invoices were paid on time in 2025, 43% late and 5% written off entirely — close to, though not directly comparable with, the EU Payment Observatory's 2023 reading of 42% on time, 50% late by value and 8% written off. EU Payment Observatory →
Source: Atradius Payment Practices Trends, US 2025, p. 4
What late payment costs
Most late US invoices do eventually get paid. The minority that do not tend to follow the same path: overdue, then written off, then — if a creditor pursues it — a slow first-instance court process.
The path from overdue to court
Roughly two in five US B2B invoices ran overdue in the most recent surveys, a small share of that value never gets collected at all, and a creditor who takes the remainder to court is looking at well over a year before a first-instance judgment.
of US B2B invoices were paid late in 2025, against 52% paid on time. Atradius →
of B2B invoice value in the US was written off entirely as bad debt in 2023. EU Payment Observatory →
is the average time to a first-instance judgment, plus attorney fees of roughly 22.5% of the claim. World Bank B-READY →
Retail suppliers dealing with short payments may also find iNymbus’ guide to invoice deductions useful for understanding common deduction causes, documentation requirements and dispute workflows.
A share that moves year to year
The OECD's own scoreboard for the United States shows the share of domestic B2B invoices overdue moving from 49% in 2022 to 55% in 2023 and back to 50% in 2024 — volatile rather than trending steadily in one direction. This is a share of invoices, not a day count, and should not be read alongside the day-based figures elsewhere on this page. OECD →
Source: OECD Financing SMEs and Entrepreneurs 2026, Table 48.1, p. 189
The United States and Europe
No single peer region exists for the United States the way Western Europe or the EU-27 does for a European country, so this page benchmarks the US against Europe using the two publishers that put the US inside their own comparison tables. Each row uses one publisher's own chart; figures from different publishers are not combined.
The United States has no genuine peer region in the way Western Europe or the EU-27 serves a European country on this report, so this module uses the two publishers that place the US inside their own cross-country tables rather than an artificial regional average. Both rows are drawn to scale and not rescaled, imputed or harmonised across publishers.
The first row uses the EU Payment Observatory's own non-EU thematic comparison of the US, the EU-27 average and Canada. The second row shows the United States against the nearest values on CRIBIS D&B's own cross-country punctuality leaderboard, rather than the most familiar European names — Germany and Switzerland sit numerically closest to the US figure, so they are shown alongside the Netherlands (the leaderboard's regional high) and Italy (its low) for range.
The US on-time payment rate has itself moved within a narrow band on the EU Payment Observatory's own series: 57.6% in 2022, 59.5% in 2023 and 58.9% in 2024. EU Payment Observatory →
Insolvencia
Allianz Trade tracks more US business insolvencies than in any other country it covers, and expects the count to keep rising into 2026. Eurostat's register-based index, used on Debitura's European country pages, does not cover the United States, so Allianz Trade's own count and forecast are the primary source here.
The forecast
Allianz Trade counts 24,641 US business insolvencies in 2025 and forecasts 26,750 for 2026, putting around 428,000 jobs directly at risk — the largest national count in the world, ahead of Germany's roughly 24,650 forecast for the same year. Allianz Trade →
Allianz Global Insolvency Outlook 2026, statistical appendix
Source: Allianz Global Insolvency Outlook 2026, statistical appendix, United States row, p. 26; jobs-at-risk figure p. 15.
For a creditor
Three things the US figures on this page imply for anyone holding a receivable from a US customer.
US small businesses waited an average of 29.1 days to be paid in June 2026, of which 8.3 days ran past the due date. Xero → That total has held in roughly the same range — 25.3 to 34.7 days — every month since January 2017, aside from a stimulus-era dip in 2021. Xero →
52% of US B2B invoices were paid on time in 2025 and 43% late, with only 5% written off entirely. Atradius → A separate survey puts on-time punctuality at 60.3% for Q4 2025, up 1.4 points year-on-year — the direction of travel is improving even where the absolute level looks unremarkable. CRIBIS D&B →
Service of process must clear one of 51 separate state and federal legal systems within 90–180 days, general limitation periods run 2–10 years on an open account or 3–15 years under a written contract depending on the state, and a first-instance judgment takes 627.5 days on average with attorney fees of roughly 22.5% of the claim on top. Atradius rates the chance of collecting at up to 50% — the weakest of the countries this report covers. Atradius Collections →
United States statistics library
16 curated figures from 12 primary sources. Each carries its publisher, year and exact locator, and each has a permanent anchor you can link to directly.
US small businesses waited an average of 29.1 days to be paid in June 2026, with 8.3 average late days — the latest point in Xero's 9.5-year monthly national series, the longest single payment-behaviour time series available for any country in this report. Time to be paid has ranged from 25.3 days (July 2021) to 34.7 days (March 2024) since January 2017.
Xero Small Business Insights Xero · US_detailed_results_2026_06.xlsx, sheet 'National data', row 117 (month 06/2026); full series rows 4–117
The United States tied the United Kingdom for the second-lowest average late-payment days (8.3) among the five markets Xero tracks in June 2026 — behind only Australia (4.3 days) and well ahead of Canada (11.4 days).
Xero Small Business Insights Xero · national detailed-results workbooks for the US, UK, Canada and Australia, June 2026 release, 'Late payments' column
US B2B suppliers grant average payment terms of 45 days, and nearly half of all B2B sales (around 50%) are currently made on credit.
Atradius Payment Practices Trends Atradius · B2B payment practices trends, US 2025, section 'B2B payment practices trends', p. 4
US businesses waited an average of 25 days beyond agreed terms in 2025, ranging from 24 days in manufacturing and HR services to 27 days in financial services, insurance and real estate.
Sidetrade Data Lake 2025 Sidetrade · press release 'Stop Ignoring Hidden Drag on the Global Economy...', 10 February 2026, 'United States Snapshot' section, pp. 1–2
60.3% of companies in the United States paid their B2B invoices on time in Q4 2025, up 1.4 percentage points year-on-year — one of the improvements CRIBIS highlighted alongside China's.
CRIBIS/D&B Payment Study 2026 (22nd edition) CRIBIS D&B · article section 'Payment punctuality worldwide: improvements in the United States and China'
52% of US B2B invoices were paid on time in 2025, 43% were paid late and 5% were written off as bad debt. Customer liquidity issues (45%) are the most-cited reason for late payment, ahead of payment-process delays (33%), supply-chain disruptions (26%) and invoice disputes (23%).
Atradius Payment Practices Trends Atradius · B2B payment practices trends, US 2025, 'Key figures and charts', p. 5
50% of US domestic B2B invoices were overdue in 2024, down from 55% in 2023 but above the 49% recorded in 2022. OECD reports this figure as a share of invoices overdue, not as a number of days — a different unit from the day-based payment-delay figures elsewhere on this page.
OECD Financing SMEs and Entrepreneurs 2026 OECD · Table 48.1 'Scoreboard for the United States', row 'Payment delays, B2B', p. 189
In the US, half of all B2B invoice value (50%) was paid late in 2023, with only 42% paid on time and 8% written off entirely as bad debt.
EU Payment Observatory — non-EU thematic report European Commission (DG GROW) · p. 15, Figure 4 'B2B late payment figures in the US in 2023'
29% of US small and medium enterprises reported payment-period difficulties in the EU Payment Observatory's 2024 comparison — below the EU's own 35% but above Canada's 24%. On-time B2B payment in the US climbed from 57.6% in 2022 to 59.5% in 2023 and 58.9% in 2024.
EU Payment Observatory — non-EU thematic report European Commission (DG GROW) · Figure 5 'Changes in payment practices in the US, 2022-24', p. 16; Table 5, row 'Payment periods', p. 44
Coface rates the United States A2 for country risk — one notch better than Germany's A3, and the strongest of the four Debitura Collection Risk Score components for the US.
Coface Country Risk Map Coface · live dashboard snapshot, retrieved 6 August 2026
United States scores 56/100 ("Very High"), the 11th most complex of 52 economies to collect a debt from. Both payment-related and court-related complexity are rated "$$$$" (highest tier); insolvency-related complexity is rated "$$$". The score has drifted higher since 2014: 53, then 55 in 2018 and 2022, 56 in 2026.
Allianz Collection Complexity Score 2026 Allianz Trade / Allianz Research · Statistical Appendix 1, p. 24
The United States is the only country in this report covered by all four Debitura Collection Risk Score components. Its Dispute Resolution topic score is 75.32 and its Business Insolvency topic score is 75.33 out of 100 (higher is better) — Germany, by contrast, is not among B-READY's 101 economies.
World Bank B-READY 2025 World Bank · Appendix B, Table B1.1, United States row, p. 45
A US commercial dispute takes 627.5 calendar days on average to reach a first-instance judgment, and the winning party's own attorney fees run to roughly 22.5% of the claim's value on top of court fees of about 0.2%.
World Bank B-READY 2025 World Bank · EconomyAnswer dataset, sheet '08_Dispute_Resolution', United States rows, variables DR_G_1_1, DR_G_1_4, DR_G_1_6
Atradius Collections rates the chance of collecting a US B2B debt at up to 50% — the weakest prospect among the countries this report covers. Without a signed contractual agreement, US courts generally award no pre-judgment interest at all; where a contract sets a rate above 4%, the contracted rate applies instead. General limitation periods run 2–10 years for an open account and 3–15 years under a written contract, depending on the state, and service of process must clear one of 51 separate state and federal legal systems within 90–180 days.
Atradius International Debt Collection Handbook (16th ed.) Atradius Collections · United States chapter, 'Chance of collecting' p. 6; sections 1.3 and 1.5, p. 7; sections 3.1–3.5, p. 8
The United States ranks 37th of 143 countries on WJP's Civil Justice factor, scoring 0.62 — far behind Germany's 5th-place finish. The US's overall Rule of Law score, 0.68, ranks 27th and fell 2.8% year-on-year.
World Justice Project Rule of Law Index 2025 World Justice Project · Civil Justice factor rankings table; overall Rule of Law score/rank, printed report p. 11
US business insolvencies are forecast to rise 9% to 26,750 cases in 2026, after 24,641 in 2025, putting around 428,000 jobs directly at risk — the largest national count Allianz Trade tracks worldwide.
Allianz Global Insolvency Outlook 2026 Allianz Trade / Allianz Research · statistical appendix, United States row, p. 26; jobs-at-risk figure p. 15
Get help
If you are chasing an overdue invoice from a US customer rather than researching the market, our United States page covers how recovery works locally, who handles it and what it costs.
Source: Atradius International Debt Collection Handbook, 16th edition, United States chapter, p. 8
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). The United States draws on all four — the only country in this report with 4-of-4 coverage.
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 twelve 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, the EU Payment Observatory, CRIBIS D&B, Sidetrade and the OECD each survey different samples with different definitions and units, and their numbers are not interchangeable.
The headline figure at the top of this page comes from Xero Small Business Insights' US national series: an average of 29.1 days to be paid and 8.3 late days in June 2026, the most recent point in a monthly series running back to January 2017 — the longest single payment-behaviour time series available for any country on this report. The payment-behaviour chart reads the same month (June) each year to hold seasonality constant, rather than averaging across months, which would blend a calculation into what is otherwise a verbatim monthly reading.
Known gaps and cautions for the United States. Eurostat's register-based bankruptcy index, used on Debitura's European country pages, is EU-only and does not cover the US; Allianz Trade's own insolvency count and forecast are used instead. The OECD's US scoreboard reports payment delay as a share of invoices overdue, not as a day count — a different unit from every other payment-delay figure on this page, and it is never blended with them. Sidetrade's press release states a national US average payment delay of 25 days in its headline and US snapshot section, but a later paragraph in the same release compares "18 vs. 29 days of delay" between Europe and "the United States" — that 29-day figure belongs to Canada's companion infographic, not the US, and is not used anywhere on this page. Where Atradius' United States country report and its North America regional report disagree on a figure, the country report is treated as canonical, per Atradius' own convention of country-level reports taking precedence over regional roll-ups. No Intrum data specific to the United States was available in the source set, so this page does not carry a supplier-cascade narrative the way Debitura's European country pages do.
| Source | Publisher | Year | US coverage |
|---|---|---|---|
| Xero Small Business Insights | Xero | Jan 2017–Jun 2026 | 114-month US national series, time to be paid and late days |
| Atradius Payment Practices Trends | Atradius | 2025 | US country report: payment terms, credit share, on-time/late/bad-debt split, reasons for delay |
| EU Payment Observatory — non-EU thematic report | European Commission (DG GROW) | 2023–2024 | Dedicated United States analysis, incl. an EU/Canada/US benchmark table |
| CRIBIS/D&B Payment Study 2026 (22nd edition) | CRIBIS D&B | 2026 (Q4 2025 data) | US on-time payment rate within a global leaderboard |
| Sidetrade Data Lake 2025 | Sidetrade | 2025 (published Feb 2026) | US national payment-delay average and by-industry breakdown |
| OECD Financing SMEs and Entrepreneurs 2026 | OECD | 2022–2024 | US Table 48.1, share of domestic B2B invoices overdue |
| World Bank B-READY 2025 | World Bank | 2025 | Score component C — Dispute Resolution and Business Insolvency topic scores; court-process detail |
| Allianz Global Insolvency Outlook 2026 | Allianz Trade / Allianz Research | 2026 | US insolvency counts 2025–2026 and jobs at risk |
| Allianz Collection Complexity Score 2026 | Allianz Trade / Allianz Research | 2026 | Score component B — United States 56/100, ranked 11th of 52 |
| Coface Country Risk Map | Coface | retrieved 6 August 2026 | Score component A — United States rated A2 |
| World Justice Project Rule of Law Index 2025 | World Justice Project | 2025 | Score component D — United States' Civil Justice factor 0.62, ranked 37th of 143 |
| Atradius International Debt Collection Handbook (16th ed.) | Atradius Collections | 16th edition, 2024 | US chance of collecting, interest rules, limitation periods and court process |
25 August 2026 — added a practical resource on invoice deductions and dispute workflows.
13 August 2026 — public launch of this page alongside the global report.
7 August 2026 — first publication of the United States country report. 16 figures from 12 primary sources, plus the four Collection Risk Score components that cover the United States. This page is updated in place; new editions replace the content at this URL rather than creating a new year-specific page.