ezyCollect reports weeks‑long wait for businesses to be paid
Roshini (Rosh) Bains is the Deputy Editor of Startups Magazine.…
ezyCollect by Sidetrade has warned that small and medium‑sized businesses (SMBs) in the US and UK continue to face significant delays in getting paid, with firms waiting weeks beyond agreed terms for invoices to clear.
New analysis from Sidetrade’s Order‑to‑Cash Data Lake shows that US companies wait an average of 25 days past due dates, with payments arriving in 54 days against typical 29‑day terms. In the UK, businesses wait 22 days beyond terms, receiving payment in 50 days on average despite 28‑day agreements. The findings span more than US$3.6 trillion in US B2B transactions and $930 billion in the UK.
For SMBs operating on thin cash buffers, those delays represent working capital they cannot deploy — a pressure that has intensified as operating costs, wages and financing expenses have risen.
To help close the gap, ezyCollect by Sidetrade has launched Aimie, an autonomous AI collections agent already used by large enterprises. Aimie analyses payment behaviour, identifies accounts likely to pay late, and prioritises actions to secure at‑risk cash. The company says the tool enables small finance teams to manage workloads that would typically require far larger departments.
“Aimie watches every account, knows how each customer has paid before, works out who is likely to be late, and goes after the cash that is genuinely at risk,” said Arjun Singh, Co‑Founder and CEO of ezyCollect by Sidetrade. “As you grow, you cannot keep hiring experienced finance people just to keep pace with collections. The work grows faster than the team.”
Singh added that the technology frees finance teams to focus on customer relationships and complex cases where human judgment is essential.
SMBs across construction and building services, manufacturing, food and beverage, and wholesale and distribution already use ezyCollect’s platform to automate collections and replace manual account‑chasing with data‑driven workflows.
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