B2B Payment Risk Map — Country-by-Country Recovery Difficulty
Not every market pays the same way. A French client on 60-day terms and a UAE client on the same terms represent fundamentally different recovery risk profiles — different legal systems, different enforcement timelines, different cultural norms around dispute and delay. This map scores each country across the variables that determine whether an overdue B2B invoice is recoverable, difficult, or effectively a write-off without specialist intervention.
Scores reflect: average Days Sales Outstanding (DSO) by country, enforceability of foreign judgments, statute of limitations on commercial debt, legal system type (common law, civil law, hybrid), and Collecty's observed recovery rate by jurisdiction based on cases handled since 1999.
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Know the payment risks before you extend credit. Our specialists cover all 25 countries listed above.
Get Free AssessmentData sourced from World Bank Doing Business, Atradius Payment Practices, Euler Hermes, and Collecty field experience. Updated annually.
How to read the risk scores
A low risk score does not mean your client will pay on time. It means that if they do not, the legal and commercial infrastructure to recover the debt is mature, accessible, and cost-effective. Germany, the Netherlands, and the UK score well not because German clients never default — they do — but because the enforcement pathway is predictable and relatively fast.
High-risk scores (typically emerging markets, jurisdictions with weak enforcement of foreign judgments, or markets where dispute resolution is slow and expensive) indicate that prevention — strong contracts, retention of title clauses, advance payment requirements — is substantially more effective than cure.
Using the map for credit decisions
Before extending credit to a new international client, cross-reference their country of incorporation with the risk map. If the score is high, consider: shorter payment terms, advance payment for first orders, export credit insurance, or explicit choice-of-law clauses directing any dispute to a more enforceable jurisdiction. These are decisions to make before the invoice is raised, not after it is overdue.