Payment Terms Around the World, Country by Country
· 4 min read
You send a Net 30 invoice to a client in Germany and it clears in 45 days. You send the same terms to a client in Milan and you are still waiting at day 70. Neither client is difficult. They are just following local norms, and those norms vary a lot more than most people invoicing across borders expect.
If you bill clients in more than one country, picking a payment window is not a matter of copying whatever you used last time. What reads as standard in one market reads as aggressive in another, and what feels generous to you may already be the local floor. Here is how the major markets actually behave, and what to write on the invoice so you get paid on the schedule you intended.
What Net 30 means in the United States and Canada
In the US, Net 30 is the default for business-to-business work, and Net 15 is common for smaller vendors and new relationships. Freelancers and agencies routinely put Due on Receipt or Net 14 on their invoices and get away with it, because there is no legal minimum pushing terms longer. Large enterprise buyers will often impose their own Net 45 or Net 60 regardless of what you write, and their accounts payable process runs on a fixed pay cycle you cannot argue with.
Canada follows US conventions closely. Net 30 is standard, tax lines differ by province (GST, plus PST or the harmonized HST), but the payment rhythm feels familiar to anyone used to the US. In both countries the term you write on the invoice is a genuine negotiation point, not a formality.
Why European terms swing from fast to very slow
The EU has a late payment directive that caps B2B terms at 60 days unless both parties expressly agree otherwise, but actual behavior splits the continent in two. Northern markets pay close to terms. Invoicing in the Netherlands, Germany, or the Nordic countries usually means Net 14 to Net 30, and clients hit those dates. Denmark and Sweden lean even shorter for domestic work.
Southern Europe runs slower. Italy and Spain have long histories of extended payment cycles, and a nominal Net 30 can stretch well past 60 days in practice. France sits in the middle, with a legal ceiling of 60 days from invoice date that many buyers use as their target rather than their limit. Across the EU, a compliant invoice also needs the right tax handling: for cross-border B2B sales within the union you often apply reverse-charge VAT and state both parties' VAT numbers on the document.
The UK behaves like a fast Northern European market. Net 30 is standard, 30 days is widely understood, and larger firms sometimes push to 60. If you invoice there regularly, the notes on invoicing in the United Kingdom cover the fields buyers expect to see.
How terms work across Asia and the Middle East
Singapore and Hong Kong operate close to Western B2B norms, with Net 30 as the common baseline and faster terms available for smaller vendors. India tends toward Net 30 to Net 45, and larger buyers often run longer. Payment against a matching purchase order is more strictly enforced there, so a missing PO number stalls things fast.
The UAE mixes practices. Government and large corporate buyers can run Net 60 or longer, while smaller local business is often quicker. Since the introduction of VAT, invoices there need proper tax detail to clear approval at all. When you are unsure what a specific market expects, the reference table on payment term conventions by country lays out the typical window, the legal ceiling where one exists, and the local quirks worth knowing before you commit to a date.
What to actually write on the invoice
State the term as an explicit calendar date, not just a label. "Net 30" is ambiguous about whether the clock starts on the issue date or the receipt date, and different countries assume different answers. Write both: the term and the resulting due date. The invoice due date calculator does the arithmetic if you are working across time zones and month boundaries.
Match the currency and tax treatment to the destination, not to your home country. A German buyer expects a VAT number and reverse-charge wording where it applies. A US buyer expects none of that. Getting these fields right is what keeps an invoice from bouncing in the approval queue before anyone even looks at the amount.
Set the term you want, then let the buyer supply their own procurement details without a round of email. On an invoice your customer can edit directly, the recipient adds their PO number, corrects their billing entity, and forwards it to their AP team from the same link, while you keep control of the amounts and terms. If they need a longer window, they submit that as a change request you approve or decline, and the whole history stays on one version.
Before you send anything abroad, the practical walkthrough on international invoicing covers currency, bank details, and tax fields together. Then create the invoice with the term written as a real date, and you will spend less time guessing why a client three countries away has not paid yet.