Press Infographics

Cyber security and data protection are becoming increasingly more crucial in the era of Digitalization 4.0. How are companies handling the growing security needs and how do you protect yourself from hacker attacks?

The trend to shop online is growing. According to the Statista Digital Market Outlook, the number of digital commerce users in Europe will increase to 642 million by 2023. Despite this development, only 31% of Swiss companies offer their customers digital payment methods.

According to the EOS Survey, payment practices in Switzerland have not changed compared with 2018, with 82% of all invoices being settled on time. Only around one in four Swiss companies believes that there will be an improvement over the next two years. Where does this skepticism come from?

Artificial intelligence (AI) – a controversial issue in the financial sector as well. Among other topics, this year’s “European Payment Practices” survey looks at the use of AI in receivables management and shows that there is widespread skepticism towards artificial intelligence. However, confidence in the AI among Swiss financial decision-makers is significantly higher than the European average.

Half of the Swiss companies polled find that their own companies are not digitalized enough compared with others. 52% of the polled financial decision-makers say that their dunning process is largely to fully digitalised. This proportion is much higher than in Europe as a whole, where only 41% of companies take advantage of the digital dunning system.

Payment defaults were reduced by one percent, in comparison with the 2017 results 2 percent of the bills are not paid at all. The share of invoices with payment delay however has increased in the last year. Every sixth outstanding bill (16% vs 15% in 2017) was paid too late.

Private customers claim temporary cash flow problems and excessive debts as main reasons for payment delays. Business customers however delay payments because their own customers fail to pay. And business customers tend to make use of supplier credits.

Customers in Switzerland prefer conventional means of payment. At over eighty percent, bank transfer and buying on account are the payment method most frequently offered by Swiss companies.
Currently, only 31 percent of firms offer payment by digital means – mostly online transfer via third party providers. Only five percent of companies offer the option of using mobile payments or e-wallets. 
 

Almost every fourth company resolves upon a restrictive hiring policy and price increases to absorb the consequences of payment delays and defaults. Another frequently applied measure is a decline in investments.

Already over fourty percent of the companies in Switzerland are working with debt collection agencies such as EOS. Seven percent of company revenue flows back into the economic cycle.

87 percent of the companies in Switzerland that work with receivables management services agree that using debt collection companies has a positive influence on payment practices of consumers as well as companies. A high figure! 

Companies in Switzerland consider the need to keeping pace with technological changes, the effort to  digitalise business processes and to reduce costs among the biggest challenges for a successful receivables management.