Andy Garcia · freelance dev
FRENES
Back to the blog
Cash Flow & SMEs

Payment Delays in France Hit Their Lowest Since 2007. SMEs Are Still €13 Billion Short.

October 19, 2026 9 min read

On Friday, October 16, the Banque de France published its yearly study of payment delays, article 5 of Bulletin no. 266, written by Olivier Gonzalez of its company observatory. The headline is good news. In 2025, French companies (micro-enterprises excluded) paid their suppliers in 49.2 days of purchases on average, 0.8 day faster than in 2024, and were paid by their customers in 41.5 days of revenue. Both are the lowest levels since 2007.

Then comes the sentence most readers will remember. More than one large company in two still pays its suppliers beyond the legal 60-day limit, and some of them gain €13 billion of extra cash from it. "This same amount is missing from SMEs' cash because of late payments," the bank writes (my translation).

I build software and sell it to small businesses, including BidForge, which reads French public tender files for them. Software and consulting turn out to be the two sectors that wait longest to be paid. So I read the full 17-page PDF, annexes included, and the annual report of the Observatoire des délais de paiement, the official payment-delay observatory, published on September 24. They change how I read the headline.

The €13 billion did not move

The SME figure is not new. The previous edition of the same study, published in October 2025 on 2024 data, also put the SME shortfall at €13 billion. The new chart shows it flat: €4 billion for micro-enterprises and €9 billion for other SMEs, in both years.

What moved is the other side. In the bank's simulation, large companies would have to hand back €13 billion in 2025 if every late payment were brought back to 60 days. The new chart puts 2024 at €11 billion (the first estimate, a year ago, was €12 billion). Mid-sized companies went the other way: their shortfall fell from €4 billion to €2 billion.

The supplier delays of the 288 large companies did fall, from 64.9 to 63.5 days of purchases. But their own customers paid them more than two days faster, while SMEs' customer delays barely moved. Large companies' trade balance, what they are owed minus what they owe, is now 0.9 day of revenue. In the bank's words, they finance "almost entirely" the delays they grant their customers with the delays they get from their suppliers. For SMEs excluding micro-enterprises, the same balance is 12.1 days.

It is a net number

The bank's web page shows one figure from Box 2 of the bulletin, 36%, without the arithmetic behind it. Large companies are not one block. Just over a third of them, 36%, gain cash by paying late: €20 billion. Another 22% lose, because their own customers pay them late, for €7 billion. The €13 billion is the balance.

So "52% pay late on average" and "36% gain from it" are both true. For some late payers, what their own customers hold back outweighs what they hold back from their suppliers.

The bank adds that about half of the cash held by the large companies that gain sits in the tenth with the highest revenue, where nine companies gain, with average supplier delays of 90 days of purchases. Then it warns against the obvious reading. Large companies that gain from late payment are spread fairly evenly across revenue levels, and their delays do not vary much with size. The concentration reflects purchase volumes: the median purchases of the top tenth are nearly 80 times those of the bottom tenth.

Software and consulting wait longest

Table 2 is the one to show anyone who sells services. Information and communication, the sector that includes software publishing and IT services, has customer delays of 70.7 days of revenue. Business consulting and services: 64.1. The all-sector average is 41.5. More than one firm in two in these two sectors is paid after 60 days, and their trade balances are the heaviest of all: 37.1 and 40.0 days of revenue to finance.

Micro-enterprises fare better, at 47.2 days in information and communication and 45.6 in consulting. Those are still the two highest lines of the micro table, with 31% and 30% of firms paid beyond 60 days.

Days are cash. The bank builds its ratios on a 360-day year and on sales including tax. A trade balance of 37.1 days means a firm with €1 million of annual sales including tax finances about €103,000 of trade credit, net of what its own suppliers lend it (1,000,000 × 37.1 / 360). A micro-enterprise in the same sector, at 30.7 days on €120,000 of sales, finances about €10,200. That is a loan granted without a credit committee.

What the data cannot show

These are balance sheets, not invoices. Delays come from receivables and payables at the closing date, which seasonality can bias, and the bank says its data cannot tell what share of invoices was paid past the agreed date. "Late" here means an average delay above 60 days of purchases or revenue, not calendar days from the invoice date, which is how the law counts. The study ignores the 45-days-end-of-month option and sector-specific terms. FIBEN, the bank's company database behind the nearly 1.3 million companies studied, is not exhaustive.

The €13 billion comes from a mechanical simulation that pulls every late payer back to 60 days. The bank calls it an upper-bound assumption that gives an order of magnitude, and notes that it ignores whether late payers could afford to pay faster. "The same amount" on both sides is a match of totals, not a traced flow: nothing here says which large company owes which SME. And the figures cover fiscal 2025, before mandatory electronic invoicing began on September 1, 2026.

The public buyer is mostly not the slow one

For the companies BidForge works for, the Observatoire's report adds a counterpoint. In 2025, the State paid in 15.9 days on average and local authorities in 19.3, both under their 30-day regulatory ceiling. Public hospitals are the exception: 71.3 days on average nationally against a 50-day ceiling, 70.2 in mainland France and 130.6 overseas. In an earlier piece I wrote that SMEs win 63% of local public contracts but only 35% of the money. The two measures are not built the same way, but on cash timing alone, a town hall paying in about three weeks is not the client to worry about.

Enforcement is rising. The DGCCRF, the French competition and consumer authority, checked 882 establishments in 2025, mainly large and mid-sized companies, and found anomalies at 54.2% of them, up from 42.3%. It notified 336 fines in 2025, following earlier checks, for €59.1 million, up 65% in a year. The largest fine in manufacturing, the most fined sector, was €2.1 million, above the €2 million ceiling per breach because of multiple breaches. On February 19, 2026, the Senate adopted, under the accelerated procedure, a bill that would raise the ceiling to up to 1% of worldwide turnover. As of October 19, the Assemblée nationale's file showed it referred to committee, with no report and no vote.

What I would put on every invoice

The Observatoire found that the problem sometimes starts with suppliers: invoices showing a due date later than the legal deadline, which the customer then simply follows. So before blaming the client, I would check five things.

  1. A due date computed from the rules: by default 30 days after delivery or service, and at most 60 days from the invoice date, or 45 days end of month, if agreed.
  2. The late-payment rate in the terms of sale and the €40 flat recovery fee on the invoice, both required. The default rate, the ECB refinancing rate plus 10 points, is 12.40% for the second half of 2026. Penalties run from the day after the due date, with no reminder needed. On a €10,000 invoice paid 30 days late, that is about €102 of interest (10,000 × 12.40% × 30 / 365), plus €40.
  3. The invoice sent the day the work is delivered. The law makes the seller issue it at delivery and the buyer ask for it.
  4. Deposits on long projects. In the bank's own formula, receivables are counted net of advances received on orders, so a deposit lowers your customer delay by construction.
  5. Your own number: customer receivables over sales including tax, times 360, set against your sector's line in Table 2.

And one thing to watch. Since September 1, 2026, every VAT-registered company in France must be able to receive electronic invoices, and large and mid-sized companies must issue them; SMEs and micro-enterprises follow on September 1, 2027. Lifecycle messages let the issuer follow an invoice inside the client's system: received, rejected, approved, put up for payment, paid. For a small supplier, the client's payables queue stops being a black box, if the platforms deliver what the report describes. The same report warns that e-invoicing changes neither the legal deadlines nor the habit of using late payment as financing.

The averages improved in 2025. The €13 billion did not. Until it does, the cheapest fix is on your own invoice template.

Sources

A project like this one?

I design and deploy products like this. Let's talk.

Let's talk