The customer who pays after the due date is borrowing money from the supplier

25 September 2026, 08:13

CRIBIS, a CRIF group company that gathers commercial information on businesses, counts every quarter how many Italian companies pay their suppliers by the due date. In the second quarter of 2026, according to the data published in July, the figure was 42 per cent: two points lower than a year earlier. Marco Preti, chief executive of CRIBIS, sums it up like this: the figure 'highlights a lengthening of payment times'.

The more interesting number, however, is a different one. Among large companies, 21.1 per cent pay on time: just over one in five. Yet large companies are also the ones with the fewest serious delays, beyond ninety days: 1.5 per cent. Read together, the two figures say that large customers almost always pay, but almost always late. It is not a difficulty: it is a way of managing their own cash with their suppliers' cash.

Late payment is a loan

A supplier that delivers the goods and waits to be paid is financing the customer for every day of the wait. As long as the wait is the one written into the contract, the loan is agreed, and its cost is usually already built into the price. The days after the due date are a loan that nobody asked for and nobody priced.

It is simple to measure. The annual turnover billed to a customer, divided by 360, gives how much that customer buys, on average, each day. Multiplied by the days of delay, it gives how much money the supplier leaves, at any point in the year, in that customer's cash.

An example. A cardboard packaging company has a turnover of €12 million; its biggest customer, a food retail chain, accounts for €3 million and is on 60-day payment terms. In practice it pays at 85. Three million divided by 360 is just over €8,300 a day: for 25 days of delay, that is about €208,000 sitting permanently in the customer's cash instead of the supplier's. If that money has to be replaced with a bank overdraft, the interest is paid by the one who waits.

Why it goes unnoticed

A customer's late payment does not appear in the profit and loss account: the invoice has been issued, the revenue booked, the profit is there. It shows only in cash, and that is why it slips through. The company's average collection days, taken as a whole, lump all customers together: the punctual ones cover for the late payers, and the average stays presentable even when a single customer weighs as much as a loan.

The useful measure is per customer: the days that actually pass between invoice and payment, set against those written in the contract. The difference, multiplied by that customer's daily turnover, shows how much credit is being extended to them without anyone having decided it.

What the law says

Legislative Decree no. 231 of 9 October 2002, on late payment in commercial transactions, gives the supplier two tools. Article 4 has default interest run from the day after the due date, with no need to serve formal notice on the customer. Article 5 sets it at the European Central Bank reference rate plus eight points, unless the businesses agree otherwise.

Claiming it from a large customer, however, can mean putting the relationship at risk. Waiving it is a legitimate choice, but it should be made knowing what it costs: €208,000 tied up for a whole year, at the rate of a bank overdraft, is a real cost, even if it appears on no invoice.

What knowing it changes

Measuring the delay customer by customer turns a hunch into a figure that can be put on the table. With that figure there is a choice: pass the cost of the delay on in the price when the contract is renewed; offer a discount to those who pay on time, which may cost less than the overdraft interest; claim default interest when the relationship allows it; or accept the delay, knowing it is part of the price paid to keep that customer.

What is not an option is not knowing. The customer who pays after the due date is not asking for a favour: it has already been granted. The difference between a supplier and a bank is that the bank puts the loan in writing.

This article was prompted by CRIBIS data on payments between businesses in the second quarter of 2026, as reported by Teleborsa.