Global Late Payment Ranking by Country 2026: 53% Overdue [Data]

Key Takeaways

Central and Eastern Europe ranks worst in the world, with 53% of B2B invoices overdue in 2025 (Atradius Payment Practices Barometer, CEE, 2025).
The United Kingdom is the worst individually named market, at 51% overdue (Atradius Payment Practices Barometer, UK, 2025).
The United States posts the lowest overdue rate among directly compared markets, at 43%, just ahead of Mexico at 41% (Atradius Payment Practices Barometer, US and North America, 2025).
Bad-debt write-offs track the same ranking: 8% in Central and Eastern Europe versus 4% in Mexico (Atradius, 2025).
Once an invoice is overdue, the Netherlands clears it fastest, averaging 12 days past terms versus 21 days in the UK (Sidetrade Data Lake, 2026).
In five European countries, 46-51% of businesses spend 10+ hours a week chasing overdue payments (Intrum European Payment Report, 2025).

Central and Eastern Europe has the world’s worst B2B late-payment rate: 53% of invoices sold on credit were overdue in 2025, according to Atradius’s Payment Practices Barometer for the region. That is not an isolated finding, and it goes well beyond the US, UK, and Australia figures most late-payment coverage stops at. Atradius ran the same survey methodology across North America, Western Europe, and Asia in 2025, which makes it possible to rank late payment severity country by country rather than relying on a single national headline number.

Which region has the worst B2B late-payment rate in the world?

Central and Eastern Europe leads every region Atradius surveyed in 2025, with 53% of B2B credit sales reported overdue. Western Europe followed at 47%, and Asia at 44%, both measured on the same “share of B2B invoices currently overdue” basis, drawn from Atradius’s regional Payment Practices Barometer reports covering the same survey wave. North America split unevenly by country: Canada’s overdue rate matched Asia’s at 44%, the United States came in lowest among these markets at 43%, and Mexico posted the best figure in the data set at 41%.

Figure 1: Share of B2B invoices overdue, ranked from worst to best. Source: Atradius Payment Practices Barometer, regional and country reports (Central & Eastern Europe, Western Europe, Asia, North America), 2025.

Which single country is the worst late payer?

Individually reported countries tell a slightly different story than the regional averages. The United Kingdom’s overdue rate, 51% of B2B invoices, is worse than the 47% average across Western Europe as a whole, which means the UK is dragging its own region’s number up rather than sitting near the middle of it. Atradius also reported that bad debts, invoices written off as uncollectible rather than merely late, account for 7% of all UK B2B invoices, a full point above the 6% Western Europe average.

Figure 2: Just over half of UK B2B invoices are overdue against agreed terms. Source: Atradius Payment Practices Barometer, United Kingdom, 2025.

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

The US sits near the better end of this ranking, though it is far from a clean bill of health. Atradius’s 2025 US Payment Practices Barometer put 43% of credit-based B2B sales overdue, a rate driven primarily by customer cash-flow pressure rather than disputes or process failures. That puts the US behind only Mexico (41%) among the seven markets in this comparison, and ahead of Canada, Asia, Western Europe, the UK, and Central and Eastern Europe. It is worth being precise about what this 43% figure measures: it is Atradius’s “share of invoiced B2B sales currently overdue,” a different, narrower metric than survey questions that ask US businesses whether they have experienced any late payment at all in the past year, which tend to produce much higher figures because a single overdue invoice out of hundreds still counts as a yes.

Does a high overdue rate also mean longer delays once an invoice is late?

Not necessarily the same ranking. The overdue rate measures how many invoices are late; a separate metric, days of delay beyond agreed terms, measures how late they run once they are. Sidetrade’s Data Lake, built from 285 million invoices worth $1.7 trillion, found the Netherlands clears overdue invoices fastest among directly compared countries, averaging just 12 days past terms, versus 15 days in Germany, 19 in France, and 21 in the United Kingdom. That 21-day UK figure lines up with the UK’s poor showing on overdue rate too, but it is a distinct number worth tracking separately, since a country could plausibly have a lower share of invoices going overdue while those that do run later once they slip. For a fuller country-by-country breakdown of total time to get paid rather than just delay past terms, see BillyPaid’s average invoice payment time by country data.

Figure 3: Average days an invoice runs past its agreed payment term, selected countries. Source: Sidetrade Data Lake, 285 million invoices, 2026.

Do late-payment rates and bad-debt losses move together by country?

They do, closely. Central and Eastern Europe has both the highest overdue rate (53%) and the highest bad-debt write-off rate (8%) of any region Atradius tracked in 2025. Mexico sits at the opposite end on both measures, the lowest overdue rate (41%) and the lowest bad-debt rate (4%). The pattern holds in between too: the UK’s 51% overdue rate pairs with a 7% bad-debt rate, Western Europe’s 47% pairs with 6%, and the US and Asia, both in the low-to-mid 40s on overdue rate, both report 5% bad debt. None of this means a high overdue rate directly causes bad debt in a single invoice, but across seven markets, the two figures move in the same direction every time.

Figure 4: Overdue rate and bad-debt write-off rate track each other closely across regions. Source: Atradius Payment Practices Barometer, regional and country reports, 2025.

How much time does chasing overdue payments actually cost businesses?

A meaningful share of the burden shows up as staff time, not just cash flow. Intrum’s European Payment Report 2025, based on 9,150 executives across 25 European countries, found that in five countries, businesses report spending 10 or more hours a week chasing overdue payments at particularly high rates: Finland (51%), France (49%), Poland (47%), Germany (47%), and Greece (46%). All five sit close to a shared average of roughly 48%, which means this is not one outlier country skewing the picture, it is a consistent pattern across very different European economies. BillyPaid covers the broader time-cost picture, including US and freelancer figures, in time spent chasing payments; a scheduled payment reminder sequence is the most direct way to take that manual follow-up off a team’s plate.

Figure 5: Share of businesses spending 10+ hours a week chasing overdue payments, against the 5-country average of 48%. Source: Intrum European Payment Report, 2025.

Global late payment ranking, worst to best

Rank	Region / country	B2B invoices overdue	Bad debt written off	Source
1 (worst)	Central & Eastern Europe	53%	8%	Atradius PPB, CEE, 2025
2	United Kingdom	51%	7%	Atradius PPB, UK, 2025
3	Western Europe	47%	6%	Atradius PPB, W. Europe, 2025
4	Canada	44%	6%	Atradius PPB, North America, 2025
4	Asia	44%	5%	Atradius PPB, Asia, 2025
6	United States	43%	5%	Atradius PPB, US, 2025
7 (best)	Mexico	41%	4%	Atradius PPB, North America, 2025

The Bottom Line

No country in this data set has late payment under control. Even Mexico, the best performer at 41% of invoices overdue, still means two out of every five B2B invoices are paid past their due date. The consistent thread across every region Atradius surveyed in 2025 is that overdue rate, bad-debt rate, and, per Sidetrade’s separate data, days of delay beyond terms, all move together: countries that struggle on one measure tend to struggle on the others too. For a small business, the practical takeaway is not which country ranks worst on a global table, it is that waiting for customers to pay on their own timeline is a losing strategy everywhere, not just in the worst-ranked markets. A structured collections process, starting with a clear, professional invoice sent on time, matters in every one of the seven markets ranked here, because none of them shows a majority of businesses getting paid without some degree of chasing.

Frequently Asked Questions

Which country or region has the highest rate of late B2B payments in the world? As a region, Central and Eastern Europe ranks worst, with 53% of B2B invoices overdue in 2025, according to Atradius’s Payment Practices Barometer for the region. Among individually reported countries, the United Kingdom ranks worst, at 51% overdue, also per Atradius.

How does the United States compare to the rest of the world on late payment? The United States reports the lowest overdue rate among the major markets Atradius tracks individually, at 43% of B2B credit sales overdue in 2025, behind Mexico’s 41% but ahead of Canada’s 44%, Asia’s 44%, Western Europe’s 47%, the UK’s 51%, and Central and Eastern Europe’s 53%.

Which country collects overdue invoices fastest once they are already late? The Netherlands runs the shortest delay beyond agreed terms among directly compared countries, averaging 12 days past due, versus 15 days in Germany, 19 in France, and 21 in the United Kingdom, per Sidetrade’s Data Lake study of 285 million invoices, 2026.

Do late-payment rates and bad-debt losses move together by country? Generally yes. Central and Eastern Europe has both the highest overdue rate (53%) and the highest bad-debt write-off rate (8%) among the regions Atradius tracks, while Mexico has both the lowest overdue rate (41%) and the lowest bad-debt rate (4%), per Atradius’s 2025 Payment Practices Barometer series.

Sources and References

Note: All figures verified as of August 2026.

53% Overdue: Global Late Payment Ranking by Country 2026 [Data]