Global late payment statistics

55% of suppliers worldwide reported late payments in 2025, up from 51% the year before (10,854 suppliers surveyed across 129 countries).

Only 37% of suppliers worldwide are getting paid on time, down from 42% a year earlier.

EU businesses wait an average of 60.3 days to be paid on B2B invoices, while government (G2B) payers take 69.8 days — 9.5 days slower than private businesses.

More than half of EU companies (52%) reported facing problems due to late payments in 2024, up from 47% in 2023 and 42% in 2021.

Eliminating late payments could unlock over EUR 100 billion a year in additional cash flow for EU micro-enterprises, SMEs and mid-caps.

European businesses now report that 12.13% of their total revenues are paid late by customers, exceeding the 12.08% share they say is the maximum they could absorb without it affecting their ability to operate.

Corporate (B2B) customers in Europe are given 43 days to pay an invoice but actually pay after 63 days on average — a payment gap that has widened from 16 to 20 days.

Hungary has the highest share of revenue paid late in Europe at 14.52% of total revenues, more than 4.8 points above the Czech Republic's 9.66%, the lowest in Europe.

Roughly one in four invoices in Europe is either paid late (19%) or never collected at all (5%) — a combined 24%.

On average, customers across Europe pay invoices 21 days after the due date.

Spain has the longest average B2B payment term in Europe at 42 days — notably higher than any other country surveyed.

Denmark is Europe's most punctual payer nation: 94.9% of Danish companies paid their B2B invoices on time in Q4 2025.

Bulgaria has the lowest on-time payment rate of any European country studied: just 19.2% of Bulgarian companies paid on time in Q4 2025 — nearly 76 points behind top-ranked Denmark.

Italy's on-time payment rate fell to 43.4% of companies in Q4 2025 (down 1.7 points year-on-year), dropping the country from 16th to 21st place in Europe's punctuality ranking.

In the UK, 57% of B2B payments were made late in 2024.

Note: The source pairs this share with a monetary total of EUR 802 million (footnote: GBP 684 million). That value is implausible by roughly three orders of magnitude for a national economy, so we publish the share only.

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 as bad debt.

Canadian small businesses had the worst invoice-payment lag among five Xero markets in June 2026, averaging 11.4 late days — well above the US and UK (8.3 days) and more than double Australia's 4.3 days.

In Asia-Pacific, the share of companies carrying ultra-long payment delays (over 180 days) worth more than 2% of annual turnover jumped to 40% in 2024 from 29% in 2023 — the highest level since Coface began the survey in 2016. In Coface's experience, 80% of these delays are never paid.

Note: The report's own executive summary (p. 1) renders the 2023 comparator as ‘23%’; the detailed section on p. 6 states 29%. We use the p. 6 figure.

The average B2B payment delay across Asia-Pacific held at 65 days in 2024, but the spread is wide: Thailand overtook Australia with the region's longest delay at 78 days, while Japan (46 days) and Taiwan (49 days) were the fastest.

Asia-Pacific companies wait 129 days on average between delivering a product and collecting payment (Days Sales Outstanding). Thailand has the region's longest cash-conversion cycle at 152 days; Singapore (117) and India (120) the shortest.

The share of Latin American companies experiencing payment delays jumped to 77% in 2025 from 51% in 2024.

Latin American suppliers extended their average credit term from 53 days in 2024 to 59 days in 2025, as fewer firms offered 0–30 day terms and more moved into the 91–120 day range.

Latin America's late payments got more frequent but shorter in 2025: the average delay fell 10 days to 42 days, and the share of companies reporting delays beyond 150 days dropped to 2% from 6% a year earlier.

Greece recorded the largest jump in business insolvencies in 2025, up 83% year-on-year — the biggest increase of the 44 countries Allianz Trade tracks.

Rising business insolvencies are set to put 2.2 million jobs directly at risk globally in 2026, up 94,000 from 2025.

Allianz Trade expects global business insolvencies to grow 3% in 2026 after 6% growth in 2025 — a fifth consecutive annual rise.

Note: Forecast vintage matters: Allianz's later Global Insolvency Outlook 2026 (April 2026) revised the 2026 figure up to +6%. Always cite the vintage when using either number.

Insolvency ranks 15th among the 20 most important global business risks for 2026, cited by 5% of risk-management experts worldwide.

Business bankruptcy declarations across the EU-27 rose 9.4% year-on-year in 2025.

Greek business bankruptcy declarations rose 89.1% year-on-year in 2025, independently corroborating Allianz Trade's finding that Greece led the world in rising insolvencies.

In 2024, SME bankruptcy volumes were at or above their 2019 pre-pandemic benchmark in 21 of 32 OECD Scoreboard countries.

Note: The report's p. 40 summary states ‘16 of 26’ — an internal inconsistency in the source. We use the p. 41 body figure, which matches Figure 1.18.

34 of 39 OECD Scoreboard countries with comparable data still have higher SME borrowing rates than before the pandemic, even as rates begin to ease.

SME loans carried a 4.78% non-performing loan ratio in the euro area as of Q1 2025, well above the 3.47% NPL ratio for total non-financial corporate loans.

Saudi Arabia has the world's highest (most complex) Allianz Collection Complexity Score among the 52 economies tracked, at 86 out of 100 (‘Severe’).

Germany and the Netherlands are the world's least complex places to collect a debt, tied at 30 out of 100 on the Allianz Collection Complexity Score — a 56-point spread versus Saudi Arabia, the most complex of the 52 economies tracked.

A quarter of the countries on Coface's Country Risk Assessment (40 of 160) sit in the two highest-risk bands (D or E); only 4 countries worldwide (2.5%) hold the top A1 rating.

For the eighth consecutive year, rule of law weakened in more countries than it improved worldwide: 68% of countries (96 of 142) declined in 2025 versus 32% (46) that improved.

Note: The Index covers 143 countries; Qatar is a new 2025 entrant excluded from the year-on-year comparison, so the change denominator is 142.

The safeguard that civil justice is free of improper government influence weakened in 67% of the 143 countries measured in 2025.

Governments' actual delivery of business-support public services lags far behind the laws on their books: the global average B-READY Public Services pillar score is nearly 23% lower than the Regulatory Framework pillar score.