Only 38% of CFOs Say Customers Are Paying Better. A Year Ago It Was 73%.

For two years, mid-market finance teams have been told that faster cash is a process problem: automate receivables, add AI to forecasting, shorten the cycle. The latest data says they did exactly that, and it worked. It also says the next constraint sits on the other side of the invoice. Customers are holding their cash until the last permitted day, and finance teams can no longer predict which week it will land.

The Measure That Fell Furthest Is the One Finance Does Not Own

The October Time to Cash report, produced by PYMNTS Intelligence with J.P. Morgan, surveyed 100 CFOs at U.S. companies with annual revenue between $250 million and $2.5 billion in July 2026 and compared them with 375 CFOs surveyed in 2025. Only 38% said customer payment-term behavior improved over the past year, against 73% a year earlier. Of the 12 performance measures the report tracks, none fell further. The two editions use different sample sizes, so the year-on-year comparison is directional, but a 35-point swing is hard to explain as noise alone.

The internal scorecard tells the opposite story. According to the report's summary, 87% of CFOs improved their overall cash flow cycle and 80% shortened their cash conversion cycle by a net 3.7 days. Some 94% of companies use at least one AI tool for cash flow, up from 70% in 2025. Organizationally, 58% now track cash flow goals across business units, up from 5% a year earlier, and 55% operate with a cash conversion cycle of 30 days or less. Every company the report classes as high velocity runs a cycle of 60 days or less.

Put together, those numbers describe finance teams that tightened everything inside their own walls while their customers moved the other way. The report's own framing is that AI cannot clear every bottleneck, and the payment-term collapse is the clearest example: no internal tool changes the day a customer decides to pay.

Paid on Time, but Never Early

A second PYMNTS dataset shows what that behavior looks like on the ledger. The 2026 Working Capital Index, based on a July survey of 120 CFOs and treasurers at U.S. and Canadian firms with revenue of $50 million to $1 billion, finds two-thirds of receivables now land exactly on the due date. Yet seven in 10 firms say they no longer know which week their money will arrive. Customers are not necessarily paying late. They are paying at the edge of terms, and with less consistency about when that edge falls.

Firms are filling the gap with borrowed money. Use of external working capital reached 83%, and 61% of firms now stack two or more financing solutions. Cash flow management and emergencies beat growth as the reason to borrow, 45% to 38%. The divide between the best and worst performers is stark: top performers run a cash cycle of 39 days against 63 at the bottom, and 70% of top performers report financing needs that stay constant through the year, against 3% of bottom performers. Technology does not explain the gap. Every top performer uses AI in treasury, but so do 97% of bottom performers.

Outright late payment is still common below the line. The 2026 Atradius Payment Practices Barometer, a survey of more than 600 businesses across the United States, Canada and Mexico, finds late payment affects seven in 10 companies and overdue invoices make up an average 23% of B2B receivables. Most overdue amounts are settled within a month of the due date, but around one in three businesses report reduced cash availability, and customer liquidity constraints are the leading cause. "The striking finding is that payment performance and financial confidence are moving in different directions," said Silvia Ungaro, senior advisor on B2B payment trends at Atradius.

Smaller suppliers feel it most. Xero Small Business Insights data shows small businesses waited an average of 29.3 days to be paid in the second quarter of 2026, with payments arriving almost nine days late, compared with 28.3 days and 8.4 days late in the fourth quarter of 2025. When customers protect their own liquidity, the wait moves down the supply chain.

Why This Changes the Receivables Agenda

The finding reframes where the next days of cash will come from. If most receivables already arrive on the due date, faster internal processing has diminishing returns: the invoice was issued, delivered and approved in time, and the customer still paid on day 30 or day 60. The remaining levers are commercial, not operational. They are the terms a company offers, the incentives it attaches to paying early, the credit limits it extends to customers under strain, and how precisely it can forecast the week cash will actually arrive.

That last point matters because uncertainty is now the cost. A finance team that knows money will arrive late can plan around it. One that cannot say which week it lands has to hold a buffer or borrow against the gap, which is exactly what the Working Capital Index shows 83% of firms doing. And the risk is widening at the same time: 87% of CFOs in the Time to Cash report expect their role in fraud and cybersecurity to grow as cash moves faster through more automated systems.

The Playbook: Win Back the Days Customers Are Keeping

• Track payment timing, not just payment status: Measure the spread between due date and cash receipt by customer, so a book that pays "on time" but unpredictably shows up before it strains the forecast.
• Revisit terms customer by customer: With two-thirds of receivables landing exactly on the due date, the terms themselves now set collection speed, so shorten them where the relationship and market allow it.
• Price the incentive for paying early: If almost nothing arrives before the due date, test whether an early-payment discount costs less than the external working capital the business is using to bridge the gap.
• Watch customer liquidity as a credit signal: Atradius names customer liquidity constraints as the leading cause of late payment, so review credit limits for customers whose payment timing starts to drift.
• Forecast cash by week, not by month: Seven in 10 firms cannot say which week cash will arrive, and a weekly view built on actual customer behavior is what turns that uncertainty into a planning assumption.
• Pair faster payments with stronger controls: As cash moves through more automated systems, extend fraud checks to vendor changes and payment releases rather than treating speed and security as separate projects.