The German payment clock
55.2days to payment
Delivery to cash in 2026: down from 59.0 days, the first fall after four consecutive rises.
30.6 daysagreed payment term
30.2 dayspayment delay
Last updated 3 November 2026 · 15 figures · 10 primary sources
Late payment statistics: Germany
German suppliers write short payment terms, then wait almost as long again for the money. What happens between delivery and cash.
of German companies were paid late on B2B invoices in 2026, against 77% across Western Europe
Atradius, 2026 →say late payment has pushed them into paying their own suppliers late, the highest share of 20 European countries
Intrum, 2026 →rise in German bankruptcy declarations in 2025, a fourth consecutive annual increase
Eurostat, 2026 →Debitura Collection Risk Score
Germany scores 2.8 out of 10 for collection risk
A German B2B receivable is among the least complicated in the world to collect. Allianz Trade ranks German collection procedure the least complex of the 52 economies it scores, level with the Netherlands, and the World Justice Project places German civil justice fifth of 143 countries. Germany sits in the lowest of the four risk bands: the typical problem for creditors is slow payment, while the legal framework preserves the value of a claim that is pursued.
Allemagne
2.8Low
Based on 3 of 4 sources
the least complex place in the world to collect a debt on Allianz Trade's 2026 ranking, tied with the Netherlands and 56 points clear of Saudi Arabia
Allianz Trade, 2026 →the chance of collecting an overdue German 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 | A3retrieved 6 August 2026 | 3.6 |
| Allianz Collection Complexity Score 2026 | 30 / 100Statistical Appendix 1, p. 24 | 3.0 |
| WJP Rule of Law Index 2025: Civil Justice | 0.82ranked 5th of 143 | 1.8 |
| World Bank B-READY 2025 | Germany is not covered | not available |
How the score is calculated, and what it is not
The Debitura Collection Risk Score is an editorial comparison index covering every country in our dataset, 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. Germany's 2.8 falls in the lowest 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 Germany: (3.6 + 3.0 + 1.8) ÷ 3 = 2.8.
Germany's score rests on three of the four components. The World Bank's B-READY 2025 dataset does not cover Germany (the country is not among its 101 economies), so the dispute-resolution and business-insolvency component is absent rather than estimated.
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 behavior
Short terms, long waits
German payment terms are the shortest Coface has recorded in Germany since 2017, yet suppliers still lose roughly a month to delay on top. Each late invoice now runs a little less late than a year ago, but more companies are caught: the share hit by delays is the highest since 2019.
average agreed payment term in 2026, down from 32.5 days and the shortest since 2017
Coface Germany Payment Survey 2026 →average payment delay in 2026, the first fall after four consecutive rises and below the pre-pandemic 39.7 days
Coface Germany Payment Survey 2026 →of German companies paid their B2B invoices on time in Q4 2025
CRIBIS D&B Payment Study 2026 →average wait for German public authorities to pay a business supplier in 2024, seven days longer than in 2023
EU Payment Observatory, 2025 →Who gets caught
More than four in five German companies were paid late in the past year
82%reported payment delays in the 2026 survey
Coface →
The share has climbed every year since 2021, when it stood at 59%, and is now the highest since 2019, when Coface recorded 85%. Coface → The length of delay moved the other way in most sectors, with automotive the clear exception: its average delay rose by 13 days on the year. Coface → Atradius, surveying separately, puts the 2026 figure at 87% against 77% across Western Europe. Atradius →
Share of German companies reporting new payment delays
Coface Corporate Payment Survey Germany, 2021 to 2026
Source: Coface Germany Corporate Payment Survey 2026, pp. 5 and 6 (2022 and 2024 from the 2025 edition, p. 4) · Coface did not publish a German survey for 2018; the 2019 reading was 85%.
Why invoices go late
Customer cash flow, not dispute, is what holds German invoices up
Half of German respondents name customer cash-flow problems as the reason B2B invoices arrive late; internal approval delays (33%) and banking delays (28%) follow. Atradius 2026 → Coface's separate survey finds the same pattern: customers' financial difficulty is still the most-cited cause at 32.9%, far below the 46% to 48% of 2017 to 2021, while one company in four (25.9%) says late payment is simply how that customer behaves. Coface → Most of the money does arrive: 71% of past-due German invoices are settled within 30 days of the due date, and 4% run beyond 90. Atradius →
55.2 days
days sales outstanding in 2026: down from 59.0 days, ending four straight annual
rises, and still below the 65.8 days recorded in 2019
Source: Coface Germany Corporate Payment Survey 2026, p. 6 · Outlier: automotive rose from 71.6 to 91.7 days.
What late payment costs
The invoice that arrives late does not stop at one company
German firms absorb late payment better than most of Europe, but the pressure still travels: from the unpaid invoice, to the receivable that never turns into cash, to the supplier further down the chain who gets paid late in turn.
The cascade
How a late German invoice becomes somebody else's late invoice
Germany reports the highest supplier-cascade rate of the 20 European countries Intrum surveys (higher than Poland, Italy or the UK), despite having some of the continent's shortest terms and lowest write-off rates. Short terms concentrate the shock rather than absorbing it.
of German companies were paid late on B2B invoices in 2026, against 77% across Western Europe. Atradius →
carry overdue payments of six months to two years worth 2% or more of annual turnover, up from 12%; in machinery, 31%. Coface treats such receivables as unlikely to be paid. Coface →
say late payment has left them behind on paying their own suppliers, the highest of Intrum's 20 European markets. Intrum →
What gets postponed
A quarter of surveyed German firms delay investment or hiring
Of all German companies surveyed in 2024, 29% said late payment had affected payments to their own suppliers, 25% investment or new recruitment, 25% production or operations, and 25% loan repayments or the need for extra financing. EU Payment Observatory → The share of German enterprises reporting any such problem jumped from 34% in 2023 to 43% in 2024, the sharpest break in a series that had been flat for five years, and still nine points better than the EU average of 52%.
37%
of German companies run a largely digitalized dunning process, the lowest share
of the eleven European countries EOS surveys, against 53% in Spain and 50% in Poland
Source: EOS European Payment Practices 2025, p. 9
Germany and its region
Germany against Western Europe and the EU
Four independent surveys place Germany on the same side of the European average on procedure and consequence, and on the wrong side of it on incidence. Each row compares Germany with the benchmark the publisher itself reports; figures from different publishers are not combined.
Companies paid late on B2B invoices, 2026
Germany vs. Western Europe · Atradius →
B2B sales made on credit, 2026
Germany vs. Western Europe · Atradius →
Enterprises reporting problems caused by late payment, 2024
Germany vs. EU-27 · EU Payment Observatory →
Companies paying B2B invoices on time, Q4 2025
Germany vs. other European markets · CRIBIS D&B →
Companies passing late payment on to their own suppliers, 2026
Germany vs. the European average · Intrum →
About this comparison
Each row uses a single publisher and that publisher's own regional aggregate, so the two bars in a row are directly comparable. Rows are not comparable with one another: Atradius surveys companies in Western Europe, the EU Payment Observatory draws on the ECB/EC SAFE survey across the EU-27, 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 harmonized across sources.
The CRIBIS row shows Germany against three named European markets from the same release rather than a regional average, because the publisher does not report one.
Insolvabilité
A fourth consecutive year of rising business failures
Germany's bankruptcy count fell for seven straight years to 2021 and has risen every year since. Two independent sources (Eurostat's register-based index and Allianz Trade's insolvency count) agree on the direction, and both expect the level to hold rather than fall back.
The turn
Seven years of decline, then four years of increase
+22.9%bankruptcy declarations in 2024: the steepest
rise in the eleven-year series Eurostat →
The 2025 increase of 10.2% is slower but still above the EU-27 figure of 9.4% for the same year. Eurostat → Allianz Trade counts 24,064 German business insolvencies in 2025 and forecasts 24,650 in 2026, a further 2%, with around 209,000 jobs directly at risk, the third-largest national count in the world behind the United States and France. Allianz Trade →
German bankruptcy declarations, year-on-year change
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=DE · extract dated 5 August 2026.
For a creditor
What this means if your customers are in Germany
Three things the German figures on this page imply for anyone holding a receivable from a German customer.
An average German invoice ties up two months of working capital
Days sales outstanding stood at 55.2 days in 2026, down from 59.0 days a year earlier. The cash behind an average German B2B invoice is therefore unavailable for close to two months after delivery, and for about three months in automotive, where DSO rose to 91.7 days. Coface →
A single late payment is a pattern, not necessarily a warning sign
82% of German companies reported payment delays in the 2026 survey Coface → and 71% of past-due German invoices are still settled within 30 days of the due date Atradius →. What separates the ordinary from the serious is the tail: 15% of German companies carry overdue balances of six months to two years worth at least 2% of turnover, debts Coface describes as unlikely to be paid. Coface →
A German claim keeps its value while it is pursued
Statutory default interest on an overdue German commercial debt runs at the Deutsche Bundesbank base rate plus nine percentage points, and the general limitation period is three years from the end of the year the claim fell due: one year for transport claims under the CMR Convention. Interest runs against the debtor for as long as the claim is open, so a German receivable does not quietly lose value in the way a short limitation period or a nominal interest rate would let it. Atradius →
Germany statistics library
Find a German statistic to cite
15 curated figures from 10 primary sources. Each carries its publisher, year and exact locator, and each has a permanent anchor you can link to directly.
15 statistics
Payment terms & delays
Germany · 503 companies
2026
German companies granted an average payment term of 30.6 days in 2026, down from 32.5 days in 2025 and the shortest reading since 2017. 92% of companies offering credit asked to be paid within two months, unchanged from the previous year.
Coface Germany Corporate Payment Survey 2026 Coface · Germany Corporate Payment Survey 2026, Chart 2 'Payment terms in Germany' and section 1 text, p. 3
Payment terms & delays
Germany · 503 companies
2026
The average payment delay in Germany fell to 30.2 days in 2026 from 31.8 days in 2025, the first decline after four consecutive increases, and remains below the pre-Covid average of 39.7 days. Automotive saw the sharpest lengthening, up 13 days, followed by machinery at 5 days.
Coface Germany Corporate Payment Survey 2026 Coface · Germany Corporate Payment Survey 2026, section 2 text and Chart 6 'Average payment delays by sectors', p. 6
Payment terms & delays
Germany · 503 companies
2026
82% of German companies experienced payment delays over the past twelve months in the 2026 survey, up from 81% in 2025, 76% in 2023 and 59% in 2021. That is the highest reading since 2019, when Coface recorded 85%.
Coface Germany Corporate Payment Survey 2026 Coface · Germany Corporate Payment Survey 2026, Chart 4 and section 2 text, pp. 5-6
Payment terms & delays
Germany · 503 companies
2026
Days sales outstanding in Germany fell to 55.2 days in 2026 from 59.0 days in 2025, after four consecutive annual increases, and remain well below the 65.8 days recorded in 2019. Automotive is the outlier, rising from 71.6 to 91.7 days, while 9 of the 12 sectors Coface tracks improved.
Coface Germany Corporate Payment Survey 2026 Coface · Germany Corporate Payment Survey 2026, section 2 'Payment delays' text, p. 6
Write-offs & bad debt
Germany · 503 companies
2026
15% of German companies said overdue payments of six months to two years, which Coface describes as unlikely to be paid, came to at least 2% of their annual turnover in 2026, up from 12% in 2025. Machinery (31%), ICT (26%) and agri-food (20%) report the highest shares.
Coface Germany Corporate Payment Survey 2026 Coface · Germany Corporate Payment Survey 2026, Chart 7 and section 2 text, p. 7; executive summary, p. 1
Payment terms & delays
Germany vs. Western Europe
2026
87% of German companies reported late payment of B2B invoices in 2026, against 77% across Western Europe, even though only 35% of German B2B sales are made on credit, versus 52% regionally. Customer cash-flow problems are the most-cited reason (50%), and 71% of past-due invoices are settled within 30 days.
Atradius Payment Practices Barometer 2026 Atradius · Payment Practices Barometer, survey results for Germany 2026, pp. 3–4
Payment terms & delays
Germany · settled payment records
Q4 2025
63.8% of German companies paid their B2B invoices on time in Q4 2025, level with the Czech Republic and behind Denmark (94.9%), Poland (86.6%), the Netherlands (74.7%) and Switzerland (68.5%).
CRIBIS/D&B Payment Study 2026 (22nd edition) CRIBIS D&B · Payment Study 2026, section 'Denmark is the most punctual country for payments'
Consequences
Germany vs. 20 European markets
2026
70% of German businesses say late payment has left them behind on paying their own suppliers, the highest share of the 20 European countries Intrum surveys, narrowly ahead of Poland (69%) and Austria (68%), and above the European average of 62%.
Intrum European Payment Report 2026 Intrum · European Payment Report 2026, p. 14, section 'Drivers of increasing late payments' and chart 'Businesses are passing on late payments to suppliers'
Consequences
Germany vs. EU-27
2024
43% of German enterprises reported problems caused by late payments in 2024, up from 34% a year earlier but still nine percentage points below the EU average of 52%, the fourth-lowest share in the EU. Of all German companies surveyed, 29% said late payment had affected payments to their own suppliers, and 25% each cited investment or new recruitment, production or operations, and loan repayments or extra financing.
EU Payment Observatory Annual Report 2025 European Commission (DG GROW) · EU Payment Observatory Annual Report 2025, Germany chapter, Figure 78, p. 73 (elaboration on the ECB/EC SAFE survey)
Payment terms & delays
Germany vs. EU-27
2024
German public authorities took an average of 71 days to pay business suppliers in 2024, seven days longer than in 2023 (a 10.41% rise, the second largest in the EU after France), and marginally above the EU average of 70 days. Germany's public sector was the fifth slowest in the EU that year.
EU Payment Observatory Annual Report 2025 European Commission (DG GROW) · EU Payment Observatory Annual Report 2025, Germany chapter, Figure 80, p. 74 (elaboration on the Intrum European Payment Report)
Collection complexity
Germany vs. 11 European markets
2025
Only 37% of German companies run a largely digitalized dunning process, the lowest share of the eleven European countries EOS surveys, against 53% in Spain, 51% in Romania and 50% in Poland. Across Europe, 12% of companies have fully digitalized the process and 73% have at least partly done so.
EOS European Payment Practices 2025 EOS Group · European Payment Practices 2025 whitepaper, p. 9, section 'European companies continue to delay digitalization'
Insolvency
Germany · register-based index
2015–2025
German bankruptcy declarations rose for a fourth consecutive year in 2025, up 10.2% after a 22.9% jump in 2024 and a 21.9% rise in 2023. The index had fallen every year from 2015 to 2021, bottoming at -15.5% in 2020. The EU-27 figure for 2025 was +9.4%.
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=DE; extract dated 5 August 2026
Insolvency
Germany · forecast
2026
Business insolvencies in Germany are forecast to rise 2% to 24,650 cases in 2026, putting around 209,000 jobs directly at risk, the third-largest national count in the world after the United States (~428,000) and France (~283,000). Allianz Trade counts 17,814 German insolvencies in 2023, 21,812 in 2024 and 24,064 in 2025.
Allianz Global Insolvency Outlook 2026 Allianz Trade / Allianz Research · Global Insolvency Outlook 2026, statistical appendix Germany row, p. 26; jobs-at-risk figure Figure 12, p. 15
Collection complexity
Germany vs. 52 economies
2026
Germany scores 30 out of 100 on the Allianz Collection Complexity Score 2026, the lowest, and therefore least complex, of the 52 economies ranked, tied with the Netherlands and 56 points clear of Saudi Arabia. Germany's score has barely moved in twelve years: 31 in 2014, then 30 in 2018, 2022 and 2026.
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
Courts & enforcement
Germany
16th edition (2024)
Statutory default interest on overdue German commercial debt runs at the Deutsche Bundesbank base rate plus nine percentage points, and the general limitation period for a claim is three years from the end of the year it fell due; one year for transport claims under the CMR Convention. Atradius rates the chance of collecting a German B2B debt at 50–75%.
Atradius International Debt Collection Handbook (16th ed.) Atradius Collections · International Debt Collection Handbook, 16th edition, Germany chapter, sections 1.3 'Interest' and 1.5 'Prescription', p. 7; collection prospect p. 6
No statistic matches those filters.
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3 ans
the general limitation period for a German commercial claim, running from the end of
the year the claim fell due: one year for transport claims under the CMR Convention
Source: Atradius International Debt Collection Handbook, 16th edition, Germany chapter, p. 7
Method and sources
How this page is built
How the Debitura Collection Risk Score works
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). Germany draws on three of the four; B-READY does not cover Germany.
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.
How the German figures were selected, and what is missing
Every figure on this page is drawn from one of the ten 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: Coface, Atradius, Intrum, EOS and the EU Payment Observatory each survey different samples with different definitions, and their numbers are not interchangeable.
The headline figures at the top of this page come from Coface's tenth German Corporate Payment Survey, fielded among 503 German companies in July and August 2026: the average agreed payment term (30.6 days, Chart 2, p. 3), the average payment delay (30.2 days, Chart 6, p. 6) and days sales outstanding (55.2 days, section 2, p. 6). Coface reports these as three separate survey averages, so the term and the delay are drawn to scale beside one another rather than added together, and neither is a component of the DSO figure.
Known gaps for Germany. The World Bank's B-READY 2025 dataset does not cover Germany, so the country has three of four score components rather than four, and no B-READY court-duration or insolvency-cost figures appear here. Xero Small Business Insights covers Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK and the US only, so there is no monthly German time-to-pay series. Atradius's 2026 survey wave states that comparisons with previous editions are not possible, so its German figures are shown as a single year rather than a trend. Where Allianz Trade's Risk Barometer and its Global Insolvency Outlook give different insolvency growth figures for Germany, the Insolvency Outlook is used as the newer and more specific source.
Primary sources used on this page
| Source | Publisher | Year | German coverage |
|---|---|---|---|
| Coface Germany Corporate Payment Survey 2026 | Coface | 2026 | 503 German companies, tenth edition, fieldwork July and August 2026 |
| Atradius Payment Practices Barometer 2026: Germany | Atradius | 2026 | German survey results, with a Western Europe benchmark |
| Intrum European Payment Report 2026 | Intrum | 2026 | 8,385 companies across 20 European countries including Germany |
| EU Payment Observatory Annual Report 2025 | European Commission (DG GROW) | 2025 | Dedicated Germany country chapter, pp. 73–79 |
| CRIBIS/D&B Payment Study 2026 (22nd edition) | CRIBIS D&B | 2026 (Q4 2025 data) | German on-time payment rate within a 37-country release |
| EOS European Payment Practices 2025 | EOS Group | 2025 | 200 German interviews within 2,200 across 11 countries |
| Eurostat: business registrations and bankruptcies | Eurostat | annual series through 2025 | German bankruptcy declaration index, 2015–2025 |
| Allianz Global Insolvency Outlook 2026 | Allianz Trade / Allianz Research | 2026 | German insolvency counts 2023–2027 and jobs at risk |
| Allianz Collection Complexity Score 2026 | Allianz Trade / Allianz Research | 2026 | Score component B: Germany 30/100, ranked 52nd of 52 |
| Atradius International Debt Collection Handbook (16th ed.) | Atradius Collections | 16th edition, 2024 | German interest margin, limitation periods and collection prospects |
| Coface Country Risk Map | Coface | retrieved 6 August 2026 | Score component A: Germany rated A3 |
| World Justice Project Rule of Law Index 2025 | World Justice Project | 2025 | Score component D: Germany's Civil Justice factor 0.82, ranked 5th of 143 |
Update log
3 November 2026: quarterly refresh. The Coface figures (payment term, payment delay, days sales outstanding, share of companies paid late and long-overdue receivables) now come from the 2026 edition of Coface's German Corporate Payment Survey, replacing the 2025 edition. Every permalink is unchanged.
13 August 2026: public launch of this page alongside the global report.
6 August 2026: first publication of the Germany country report. 15 figures from 10 primary sources, plus the three Collection Risk Score components that cover Germany. This page is updated in place; new editions replace the content at this URL rather than creating a new year-specific page.