Kloten, October 5, 2022
- Almost every 4th company expects payment behavior to deteriorate
- In Western Europe, every 5th invoice is paid late, in Eastern Europe even every 4th invoice is paid late
Payment practices in Europe have deteriorated over the last three years. For around one in five companies, this development has led to existential fears. These are the findings of the 13th representative EOS study 'European Payment Practices', for which 3,200 companies in 16 European countries were surveyed.
Despite extended payment periods by companies, private customers in particular paid their invoices 19 days late on average. Compared to the previous study from 2019, where 16% of invoices from private customers were paid late or not at all, the figure in the current study is already 20%. The companies surveyed cited their customers' liquidity bottlenecks as the main reason for poor payment behavior.
As a result of these payment delays and bottlenecks, companies stated that they were most frequently struggling with liquidity bottlenecks (42%) and profit losses (51%). To compensate, almost a third of companies had to reduce their investments and increase prices. Companies are correspondingly pessimistic about the future. While 22% of respondents still expected payment practices to improve in 2019, almost 24% of respondents currently anticipate a further deterioration. In Denmark, Switzerland, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Slovenia and Bulgaria in particular, the forecasts are particularly subdued compared to 2019. "The fact that payment behavior has deteriorated significantly is worrying - especially because we have to expect a further decline in payment levels in view of the current economic figures and high inflation," says Marwin Ramcke, CEO of the EOS Group.