Germany Payment Survey 2019: Turn of the tide

This is the third edition of Coface’s survey on payment experience in Germany, done this summer, with 442 participating companies located in Germany. Our survey highlights that Germany is in a changing phase. The pressure on companies due to international competition is getting stronger. This is one of the reasons why German companies have increased their average credit period from 29.8 days to 35.9 days between 2017 and 2019.

Another one is that credit risks are insured. However, the confidence of the companies in their customers decreased. Short-term credit periods still dominate the market. 87% of the surveyed companies request that payments be made within 60 days, which is very short in international comparison (in our Poland payment survey1 64% of the companies requested payments within 60 days in 2019; in our China payment survey the share of companies was below 50% and in Morocco it was only 16%).