Paying and getting paid in B2B – this is how we do it!
Cash flows (incoming and outgoing) are a key factor in your organisation’s health. Continuously negative cash flows ultimately lead to unwanted payment problems. That makes it vital to maintain a healthy cash flow. When your customers pay you on time, you can also pay your suppliers on time.
But if that isn’t happening, you can easily wind up in a downward spiral that can have serious consequences for your business. So how can you avoid that? Your customers ultimately decide for themselves when they are actually going to pay your outstanding invoices. After all, they’re the ones who are clicking the ‘Pay’ button. Still, there are many things you can do to ensure your customers are paying you on time. Visma | Onguard asked over 300 finance professionals in the Netherlands about their current payment behaviour. Which payment methods are they using? How many days do they leave invoices unpaid? And how has the pandemic affected their payment patterns? We also asked these finance professionals for their thoughts on using cryptocurrency in business payments. We’ve compiled all the results in this report, which is the second research report based on our 2022 FinTech Barometer.
How do customers like to pay and how do organisations like to be paid?
The moment you offer different payment methods as an organisation, it is of course important that the payment method offered is also the one the customer prefers to use. The FinTech Barometer shows that iDEAL is most favoured by both organisations (35%) and customers (30%) alike. Followed by direct debit (34% and 29% respectively) and manual bank transfer (25% versus 21%). The least popular is paying with cryptocurrencies. Only 6% of organisations say this is preferred from an organisational perspective. From a customer perspective, this percentage is even lower: 4% of customers prefer paying with cryptocurrencies. We discuss this in more detail later in this research report.
