The share of suppliers being paid on time has slumped from 42% to 37% globally over the past year, placing a “significant strain” on their working capital management, research by SAP Taulia has found.
Late payment is “on the rise”, the working capital-focused fintech said following a survey of more than 10,000 suppliers from 129 countries carried out late last year.
More than half (55%) of respondents reported being paid late during 2025, up from 51% the previous year and 36% five years ago, according to the survey results, due to be published on March 10 and seen by GTR. The remaining 8% reported early payment.
SAP Taulia said the gradual increase was likely a symptom of persistent uncertainty over trade policy and disruption to supply chains over recent years, which was pushing businesses to rethink production and cost structures.
“This shift suggests that buyers are preserving their own cash as a critical buffer against macroeconomic uncertainty, leading to cash flow pressures falling on their suppliers,” the company said.
However, suppliers are also grappling with those uncertainties, the survey found. Globally, 25% reported squeezed profit margins and 23% said they faced higher input costs. Nearly a fifth said they were raising their prices to ensure business continuity.
Around a quarter of respondents in the US and Canada – and 37% in Mexico – said the rising cost of goods due to tariffs has been the largest impact on their business over the last year.
In other regions, uncertainty was the largest issue faced, cited by around a third of suppliers in Australia, France, Germany and the UK. Globally, 22% said they were so far unable to quantify the impact of tariffs.
“This highlights a widespread sense of unpredictability exacerbated by trade policies,” SAP Taulia said.
The findings echo a report published by the company late last year, which concluded there was “no clear endpoint” to tariff uncertainty, leaving businesses forced to plan for various potential outcomes simultaneously.
In response to liquidity pressures arising from late payments, the survey found 66% of suppliers are now interested in early payment solutions, such as payables and receivables financing programmes. The figure has crept up from 63% last year and 61% the year before.
There is also growing interest in “on-demand, self-serve options” such as virtual cards and lines of credit, the survey found.
It suggested this trend is a “turning point in global supply chains”, where suppliers are “more discerning and proactively seeking financing solutions that offer flexibility and control”.
Despite the widening payment gap, the report found that 82% of suppliers remained optimistic about the year ahead, a similar figure to each of the previous two annual surveys. The proportion of respondents that said growth was their top priority dropped from 53% to 46%.
