The Delivvo Blog

Guides|May 3, 2026

The 2026 Late Payment Crisis: Freelancers Now Wait 56 Days to Get Paid

B2B invoices in EU/US now sit unpaid for `60+ days` on average, up from 53 in 2023, and `73%` of US freelancers got paid late last year. Here is what actually works.

Late payments are not a vibe, they are a measurable, worsening crisis. Average B2B payment terms in EU/US have stretched past `60 days`, late payments cost UK SMEs `£22 billion` a year, and AI bookkeeping has done nothing to fix it. This playbook walks through why payments slipped, the recovery sequence that gets invoices paid, contract clauses that pre-empt the problem, and when to escalate to formal collection.