Average Invoice Payment Time by Country [2026 Data]

Businesses waited an average of 51 days to get paid on a B2B invoice in 2026, according to Sidetrade’s Data Lake, which tracked 285 million invoices worth $1.7 trillion. That average hides a wide spread by country: the Netherlands collects in 40 days, India takes 77 days, nearly double the fastest market, and in the US, 43% of invoiced B2B sales run overdue against an average agreed term of 45 days. Here is how average invoice payment time breaks down country by country, and what separates the fast payers from the slow ones.

How long does it take to get paid worldwide in 2026?

Globally, the average business waits 51 days between issuing an invoice and receiving payment, according to Sidetrade’s Data Lake, a dataset built from over $8 trillion in B2B transactions across more than 42 million buying companies, with 285 million invoices worth $1.7 trillion captured and analyzed for the 2026 report. Sidetrade splits that 51-day figure into two parts: 32 days is the average agreed contract term, and the remaining 19 days is delay beyond it. Put another way, more than a third of the total wait, 37% of the full payment cycle, happens after the invoice was actually due.

Figure 1: Of the 51-day global average time to get paid, 32 days is the agreed contract term and 19 days is delay beyond it. Source: Sidetrade Data Lake, 2026 (285 million invoices, $1.7 trillion).

Which country pays invoices fastest, and which is slowest?

The Netherlands sets the global benchmark, averaging 40 days to get paid in total, of which only 12 days is delay beyond agreed terms, the lowest delay figure Sidetrade recorded anywhere. India sits at the opposite end: businesses there wait an average of 77 days to collect, with 43 of those days running past the original contract term, nearly four times the Dutch delay figure. That 37-day gap between the fastest and slowest major markets is larger than the entire average payment term in most of Western Europe, and it is a gap a supplier has to fund out of its own cash reserves while it waits.

Australia and the global average both sit closer to the fast end of this range than to India: Xero’s 24.1-day Australian average and Sidetrade’s 51-day global average both run well behind the Netherlands’ 40 days but nowhere near India’s 77. That spread is worth noting because it means neither “developed economy” nor “large economy” reliably predicts payment speed on its own. Atradius does not publish a single day-count total comparable to Sidetrade’s or Xero’s total-days-to-pay figure for the US; its US data is built around payment terms and overdue share instead, covered in the next section.

Figure 2: Total average time to get paid, on the same axis for comparison. Each figure comes from a separate named survey with its own methodology, not one unified global metric. The United States is not included here because Atradius’s US survey does not publish a comparable single total-days figure. Sources: Xero Small Business Insights (Australia, March-quarter 2026); Sidetrade Data Lake (Netherlands, global average, India, 2026).

Is the pressure on payment time getting worse or better?

It is getting worse in most regions, according to a separate measure. Allianz Trade’s 2025 Global DSO and Working Capital Report found that global working capital requirements, a broader measure than DSO alone that also accounts for how long a business holds inventory before it sells, reached 78 days in 2024, the highest level since 2008. Regionally, the Middle East and APAC carried the heaviest loads, at roughly 97 and 82 days respectively, ahead of South America at 70 days, North America at 69 days, and Western Europe at 67 days. Western Europe’s figure rose for a third consecutive year, and Allianz Trade singled out France and Germany as the two Western European economies where the pressure increased most, with France’s working capital requirement climbing by 8 days and Germany’s by 2 days over the year. North America was the exception, posting a rare decline of about 3 days. Measured a different way again, by the share of invoices currently overdue rather than by average delay in days, Atradius put Western Europe’s overdue rate at 47% in 2025 and Central and Eastern Europe’s higher still, at 53%, a reminder that Eastern and Western Europe do not experience the same payment-terms problem equally even when they sit inside one continent.

How does the United States compare to the rest of the world?

US businesses agree to average payment terms of 45 days, according to Atradius’s 2025 US Payment Practices Barometer, close to the 40-51 day range Sidetrade recorded for the Netherlands and the global average, though the two surveys measure payment time differently: Sidetrade reports total days elapsed, while Atradius reports the agreed term itself. Against that 45-day term, Atradius found 52% of invoiced B2B sales were paid on time, 43% were overdue, and 5% were ultimately written off as bad debt.

Figure 3: Payment status of US business-to-business invoices against their agreed terms. Source: Atradius Payment Practices Barometer, United States, 2025.

Why do European countries pay so differently from each other?

There is no single “European” payment time. Sidetrade’s Data Lake puts average delay beyond terms at 12 days in the Netherlands, 15 days in Germany, 19 days in France, and 21 days in the United Kingdom, a range of nearly two weeks among neighboring, similarly developed economies. A separate 2025 survey from Coface arrived at a markedly higher UK figure, an average delay of 32 days, which is a reminder that “average payment time” depends heavily on which businesses a given study surveys and how it defines delay. Coface’s methodology surveys a broader cross-section of UK companies about payment experience over the past year, while Sidetrade’s figure is drawn from actual invoice-level transaction data inside its platform, which likely explains at least part of the gap between the two.

The direction of change matters as much as the absolute figure. France’s average delay sits in the middle of this European range at 19 days, yet France was also the Western European economy where Allianz Trade recorded the steepest year-over-year increase in working capital pressure, an 8-day jump in 2024. Germany, by contrast, combines the second-lowest delay figure in this comparison with the smallest increase in pressure, just 2 days, suggesting German payment behavior has stayed comparatively steady even as the regional trend has moved the other way. For the deeper breakdown of what late payment costs businesses on top of the delay itself, see Late Payment Statistics 2026.

Figure 4: Average number of days an invoice runs past its agreed payment term, four European markets, same source and methodology. Source: Sidetrade Data Lake, 2026.

Does a country’s overall payment speed predict how late it typically runs?

Not consistently. Plotting each market’s total days-to-pay against the share of that total spent in delay shows Australia and the Netherlands both pay relatively fast and keep delay to a similar, moderate share of the total cycle. India is the clear outlier on both dimensions at once: slowest overall, and the highest proportion of its cycle spent past terms. The United States is measured on a different basis by Atradius (payment terms and overdue share, not a single total-days figure), so it is not plotted on the same axes here, but its own 43% overdue rate against a 45-day term points the same direction as India’s outlier position: a meaningful share of the agreed cycle running past terms rather than inside it.

For a business setting terms with an overseas client, that distinction is the practical takeaway. A market like Australia or the Netherlands can be planned around with reasonable confidence, because most of the wait is the agreed term itself rather than an unpredictable extra delay on top of it. A market that behaves more like India, where delay makes up well over half the total cycle, is harder to plan around no matter how short the stated payment term is, because the agreed number on the invoice explains less than half of how long the wait will actually run.

Plotted against each other on those two measures, Australia and the Netherlands both land in the fast-and-mostly-on-term group, India sits alone at the slow-and-delay-heavy extreme, and the global average falls between them, closer to the slow end than either single-country example except India. The United States is not included in this comparison because Atradius’s US survey does not publish a comparable total-days/delay-share split.

Average Invoice Payment Time by Country: Comparison Table

Country	Average total days to pay	Average delay beyond terms	Source
Netherlands	40 days	12 days	Sidetrade Data Lake, 2026
Australia	24.1 days	6.9 days	Xero Small Business Insights, Mar-Q 2026
United States	45 days (average agreed term)	43% of invoices overdue against that term	Atradius Payment Practices Barometer, US, 2025
Global average	51 days	19 days	Sidetrade Data Lake, 2026
India	77 days	43 days	Sidetrade Data Lake, 2026

Table 1: Average invoice payment time by country. These figures are not a single unified metric; each is drawn from a separate named survey with its own sample and methodology, and “total days to pay” and “delay beyond terms” are calculated differently by each source.

Country	Average delay beyond payment terms	Source
Netherlands	12 days	Sidetrade Data Lake, 2026
Germany	15 days	Sidetrade Data Lake, 2026
France	19 days	Sidetrade Data Lake, 2026
United Kingdom	21 days (Sidetrade) / 32 days (Coface)	Sidetrade Data Lake, 2026; Coface, 2025

Table 2: European delay-beyond-terms comparison. The UK row shows two separately sourced figures side by side to illustrate how much methodology can move the number for the same country.

The Bottom Line

Average invoice payment time is not one global number. It is 40 days in the Netherlands, 77 in India, and in the US 43% of invoices run overdue against a 45-day average term, and even within Europe total time swings by nine days between the fastest and slowest markets Sidetrade tracked. What the data does agree on is where the time actually goes: a meaningful share of every country’s cycle, from roughly 30% in Australia and the Netherlands to more than half in India, is spent past the agreed term rather than inside it. That is the part a business can influence directly. A BillyPaid invoice includes a payable link and a clear due date on every document by default, the kind of structural fix the data above ties to a shorter gap between what was agreed and what actually gets collected. For the wider invoicing-statistics roundup this data sits inside, see Invoice Statistics 2026.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the average time to get paid on an invoice in 2026? The global average is 51 days, made up of 32 days of agreed contract terms plus 19 days of delay beyond them, according to Sidetrade’s Data Lake study of 285 million invoices worth $1.7 trillion, published February 2026.

Which country pays business invoices the fastest? The Netherlands is the fastest major market tracked, averaging 40 days to get paid overall, including just 12 days of delay beyond agreed terms, per Sidetrade’s Data Lake (2026).

How does the United States compare to the rest of the world on invoice payment time? US businesses agree to average payment terms of 45 days, and 43% of invoiced B2B sales are overdue against those terms, according to Atradius’s 2025 US Payment Practices Barometer.

Why do payment times vary so much within Europe? Sidetrade’s Data Lake puts average delay beyond terms at 12 days in the Netherlands, 15 in Germany, 19 in France, and 21 in the United Kingdom. A separate 2025 survey from Coface put the UK’s average delay even higher, at 32 days, a reminder that the exact number depends heavily on which businesses and which methodology a given study surveys.

Sources and References

1. Sidetrade - Sidetrade Data Lake report (10 February 2026), global and country-level average days-to-pay and delay data, based on 285 million invoices worth $1.7 trillion.
2. Atradius - Payment Practices Barometer, United States (2025), US average payment terms and on-time/overdue/bad-debt split.
3. Atradius - Payment Practices Barometer, North America (2025), regional context for the US figures.
4. Xero - Small Business Insights, March-quarter 2026, Australian average payment days.
5. Coface - Payment Survey (2025), UK average payment delay, cited for comparison against Sidetrade’s UK figure.
6. Allianz Trade - 2025 Global DSO and Working Capital Report, regional working capital requirement figures and year-over-year change by region.
7. Atradius - Payment Practices Barometer, Western Europe (2025), Western Europe overdue-invoice share.
8. Atradius - Payment Practices Barometer, Central and Eastern Europe (2025), Central and Eastern Europe overdue-invoice share.

Note: All figures verified as of August 2026.