B2B ecommerce payments: net terms, BNPL and checkout

In brief: B2B ecommerce payments come down to four things: offering the payment terms business buyers expect, usually 30 or 60 days, deciding who carries the credit risk, building a checkout designed for companies, and connecting orders, invoices and incoming payments automatically.

Key takeaways

Under EU late payment rules the default term between businesses is 30 days; anything beyond 60 days must be expressly agreed (in Italy, also in writing).
B2B BNPL lets you offer terms while getting paid upfront: in most models the default risk moves to the provider.
A B2B checkout handles multiple users, customer-specific terms and the data needed for e-invoicing.
Virtual IBANs and an automation linking store, ERP and bank remove manual reconciliation.
Late payers owe statutory interest (in Italy 10.15% in the second half of 2026) and a flat 40 euros per invoice.
The most dangerous fraud does not go through checkout but through email: a request to change a supplier's bank details.

Anyone selling to other businesses online soon learns that a "pay by card" button is not enough: procurement wants to order today, receive a correct electronic invoice and pay on terms. If the site cannot handle that, the order goes back to phone and email. If you are still shaping the channel, start with the differences between B2B and B2C strategies and the opportunities and challenges of B2B ecommerce.

What counts as a B2B payment in ecommerce?

B2B payments are payments between businesses, settled by bank transfer, direct debit, corporate card or on agreed terms. Compared with B2C, order values are higher, the person who orders is often not the person who pays, and the buyer almost always asks to pay later. Payment terms (net terms, such as "net 30") are the days the buyer has to pay the invoice: in practice, credit the seller is funding.

Which payment methods should you offer business buyers?

At least one immediate method, one on terms for trusted customers and, for large orders, one where a third party takes on the credit risk.

Method	When it makes sense	Advantage	What to check
Card, including corporate cards	First orders, smaller amounts	Paid immediately, no credit risk	Fees and the buyer's spending limits
Prepayment or instant transfer	New customers, made-to-order goods	Funds confirmed before shipping	Order on hold until the payment is matched
Bank transfer on 30 or 60 day terms	Repeat, vetted customers	What procurement teams expect	Default risk and tied-up cash
SEPA Direct Debit	Recurring supplies, ongoing contracts	Collected on the due date, no action from the buyer	Mandates to collect, failed debits to handle
B2B BNPL	Large orders, new customers asking for terms	Paid upfront, risk moves to the provider	Fees, countries and order limits covered

Net 30 or net 60: what does the law say?

EU late payment rules set 30 days as the default term between businesses. In Italy they are implemented by Legislative Decree 231/2002: under article 4, longer terms can be agreed, but anything beyond 60 days must be expressly agreed, documented in writing and not grossly unfair to the supplier. Late payment interest at the statutory rate accrues automatically from the day after the due date, with no formal reminder needed (articles 4 and 5). Selling elsewhere in the EU? Check local rules too.

For an online store this means writing terms into your B2B terms of sale and the customer's account, not leaving them to email. Every day of credit is your own cash. Take, as a scenario, a distributor selling 400,000 euros a month online, all on 60 day terms: it always has roughly 800,000 euros owed by customers. Limiting terms to vetted buyers, or having a third party fund them, does more for cash flow than any checkout tweak.

What should you do when a business customer pays late?

Start with what the law already gives you. If the contract sets no other rate, statutory late payment interest applies. In Italy it equals the European Central Bank reference rate plus 8 percentage points (art. 2 of Decree 231/2002), which comes to 10.15% for the second half of 2026; the EU's Your Europe portal publishes the rate for every member state. On top of that you are owed a flat 40 euros per invoice paid late, with no formal notice needed, and higher recovery costs, such as legal fees, if you can prove them (art. 6; Your Europe notes that some countries set a higher amount).

Being entitled to it does not mean you must always charge it: with a key account you may choose to waive it, but that should be a decision, not an oversight. In a B2B store most of the process can be automated:

a reminder a few days before the due date, with a link to the invoice and payment details;
a dunning email the day after the due date, with the amount due and, if your policy says so, accrued interest and the flat 40 euros;
a hold on new orders on terms: while the account is overdue the buyer can still order, but only by paying upfront;
an alert to the account manager, who can often settle it with one call;
formal recovery beyond a set number of days or amount: a formal demand, a collection agency or an enforceable court order.

Selling to buyers in other EU countries? Check which law governs the contract: Your Europe explains that if the parties did not choose one, late payment is generally governed by the law of the creditor's country.

What is B2B BNPL and when does it make sense?

B2B BNPL (buy now, pay later for businesses) is a service in which a third-party provider pays the seller upfront and gives the business buyer payment terms, usually by invoice. The provider assesses the buyer when the order is placed and, in most models, takes on the default risk. Mondu, a European provider, describes invoice payments on 30 to 90 day terms and instalments over 3, 6 or 12 months, with the seller paid upfront and credit checks on every order.

Factoring comes later: the business assigns invoices it has already issued to a factor, which manages collection, can advance all or part of the amount and can guarantee against the buyer not paying (this is how Assifact, the Italian factoring association, describes it). B2B BNPL acts at checkout instead, and the buyer sees it as an ordinary payment option. It fits when you sell to many SMEs that ask for terms and cannot vet each one, and when your average order can absorb the fee. It fits less with a handful of large accounts on framework agreements, where a 60 day invoice remains the simplest route.

Option	When it applies	Who advances the cash	Who carries default risk	Best for
In-house payment terms	At order, using the account's terms	Nobody: you fund it	You	A few known, repeat customers
B2B BNPL	At checkout, order by order	The provider, right after the order	The provider, in most models	Many SMEs, new buyers, frequent online orders
Factoring	After invoices are issued	The factor, fully or partly, if agreed	The factor only if the contract includes a guarantee	An existing book of receivables, including offline sales

What should a B2B checkout include?

It should let a company buy the way it actually buys: with several people, its own conditions and internal rules. Shopify's B2B offering, for example, handles companies with multiple buyers and locations, each with its own permissions, payment terms and payment methods, plus quantity rules and saved cards for checkout, draft orders and invoices. On any platform you need:

company accounts with multiple users: who orders, who approves, who pays;
customer-specific terms: pay now for new accounts, 30 or 60 days for buyers with a track record;
saved billing data: legal name, VAT number and, for Italian buyers, the SdI recipient code or certified email (PEC);
VAT number checks for EU buyers: the European Commission's VIES tool tells you whether a business is registered to trade across borders within the EU; run it automatically when the account is opened and store the result;
reorders, quotes and the buyer's purchase order number, printed on the invoice (the same goes for a B2B spare parts portal).

How do you automate invoicing and payment reconciliation?

By connecting the store that creates the order, the ERP that issues the invoice and the bank or gateway that receives the payment. Reconciliation means matching each incoming payment to the invoice it settles. Done by hand on transfers with incomplete references, it is one of finance's slowest jobs.

In Italy, e-invoicing through the Sistema di Interscambio (SdI) is already mandatory, with a few exemptions, for VAT-registered businesses resident or established in the country when they invoice other parties based in Italy. What is usually missing is automatic payment matching. A clean approach is a virtual IBAN per customer, a dedicated account number only that customer pays into: Stripe, for instance, uses one precisely to automate reconciliation and holds overpayments and underpayments in a customer balance. A typical flow, built with n8n or Make on the APIs of your platform, ERP and bank:

the order is confirmed with payment terms and the buyer's reference;
the ERP issues the electronic invoice and records the due date;
when a payment arrives, the automation reads virtual IBAN, amount and reference and matches it to the open invoice;
if everything matches the invoice is marked as paid, otherwise an exception goes to finance;
a reminder goes out before the due date, then a dunning email and an alert to the account manager.

Where does AI fit? Mostly in the messy cases: incomplete references, one transfer settling several invoices, amounts net of discounts or credit notes. A model can suggest the most likely match, but let rules decide the clear cases and a person confirm the doubtful ones; to see whether it pays off, track the share of correct matches and the hours saved, as explained in the guide to KPIs for measuring the value of AI.

This is the kind of flow I design in my business automation services; for a wider view, see the guide to business process automation.

Instant transfers and Verification of Payee: what changes?

Under the EU Instant Payments Regulation, banks in the euro area had to receive instant transfers by 9 January 2025 and send them by 9 October 2025, charging no more than for a regular transfer; funds arrive within ten seconds, at any hour. Since 9 October 2025 Verification of Payee is also mandatory: before every transfer the bank checks that the payee's name matches the IBAN.

For B2B sellers this means releasing an order paid by instant transfer right away, and making sure the name on your account matches the legal name on your invoices, or the buyer gets a mismatch warning. It is also a defence against tampered IBANs, one of the risks covered in the guide to website and ecommerce security. From 1 July 2030, under the EU ViDA package, cross-border B2B sales within the EU will face digital reporting based on e-invoicing: if you sell abroad, structure your invoice data now.

How do you protect B2B payments from bank detail fraud?

The most common fraud between businesses does not touch checkout: it comes by email. Europol describes it like this: someone poses as a supplier or creditor, by email, letter or phone, and asks for the bank details on future invoices to be changed; the new account belongs to the fraudster. The countermeasures Europol recommends to businesses are simple, but they need to be written into a procedure:

check every request to change bank details using contact details from previous correspondence, never those given in the email or letter asking for the change;
above a set amount, confirm the account and payee with an extra step, such as a meeting with the company or a call to your usual contact;
ask the people who pay invoices to always check them for irregularities;
limit what your website and social profiles reveal about suppliers and contracts, since it makes the request more convincing;
report attempts to the police, even unsuccessful ones.

As a seller, the risk is that someone sends your customers fake invoices in your name. It helps to state from account opening that you will never change bank details by email, to show payment details in the logged-in area of your site and to use a virtual IBAN per customer, so a payment sent elsewhere stands out immediately in reconciliation. Verification of Payee adds a check on the bank side, but it does not replace the procedure.

Online business accounts and corporate cards: how do you choose?

They are the outgoing half of B2B payments: suppliers, advertising, software, travel. An account run entirely online saves time, but how well it fits with your other systems matters more than "zero monthly fee" offers. Before choosing, check:

the real costs, not just the monthly fee: transfers, extra cards, cash withdrawals, foreign currency payments;
transaction exports or an API to connect the account to your ERP and automate reconciliation;
multiple users with different roles: who prepares a payment, who approves it, who only sees transactions;
real-time notifications and two-factor sign-in;
instant transfers, virtual IBANs or sub-accounts to keep online channel income separate;
support you can reach when a payment gets stuck.

For cards, the basic choice is debit or credit: a debit card takes the money from the account straight away, so spending is immediate and predictable; a credit card defers it and, if the balance is paid in instalments, can carry a cost. Whichever you choose, the useful features are virtual cards with limits per employee, supplier or project (such as a card used only for ad campaigns), instant freezing from the app and a receipt attached to every expense, so nobody rebuilds expense reports at month end.

How to apply this in your company: first steps

Measure your starting point: average days to collect, share of B2B orders still placed by email or phone, hours per month spent reconciling.
Write a credit policy: who pays upfront, who gets 30 or 60 days and with what limits, and put it in your terms of sale.
Set up a B2B checkout with multiple users, invoicing data, customer-specific terms and purchase order numbers.
Test B2B BNPL on one segment and compare the fee with the bad debt and chasing it saves.
Automate reconciliation and track the share of payments matched with no manual work.
Write the procedure for late payments and bank detail changes: who chases, when orders on terms are put on hold, how a request for new bank details is verified.

Mistakes to avoid

Giving every customer payment terms by default, with no basic credit check.
Going beyond 60 days without a written agreement.
Copying the B2C checkout: no VAT number, no invoicing data, one user per company.
Automating invoices but not payments: the bottleneck moves, it does not disappear.
Still accepting orders on terms from buyers with overdue invoices.
Changing a supplier's bank details because an email asked you to.

Frequently asked questions (FAQ)

What are B2B payments?

Payments between businesses: one company buys from another and settles by bank transfer, direct debit, corporate card or on agreed payment terms. Compared with consumer purchases, order values are higher, orders repeat and buyers usually expect to pay on terms.

What are the maximum payment terms between businesses in the EU?

Under the EU late payment rules, as implemented in Italy by Legislative Decree 231/2002, the default is 30 days. Longer terms can be agreed, but anything beyond 60 days must be expressly agreed in writing and must not be grossly unfair to the supplier.

What is B2B BNPL and who carries the default risk?

A service in which a third-party provider pays the seller upfront and gives the business buyer terms, for example 30 to 90 days. The provider checks the buyer at the time of the order and, in most models, takes on the risk of non-payment in exchange for a fee charged to the seller.

How do you automate payment reconciliation for a B2B online store?

Give each customer a unique reference, such as a virtual IBAN, and connect your bank or gateway to your ERP with an automation. Each incoming payment is matched to its open invoice and only exceptions reach your finance team.

Do instant SEPA transfers cost more than regular transfers?

No, not in the euro area. The EU Instant Payments Regulation bars banks from charging more for an instant transfer than for an equivalent regular one, and since 9 October 2025 banks in the euro area that offer credit transfers must also let customers send instant ones.

How much late payment interest can a business charge in 2026?

If the contract sets no other rate, the statutory rate applies: in Italy it is the European Central Bank reference rate plus 8 percentage points, which is 10.15% for the second half of 2026. Your Europe publishes the rate for every EU country. On top of interest, you can claim a flat 40 euros for each invoice paid late, plus higher recovery costs if you can prove them.

B2B BNPL or factoring: which is better?

It depends on when you need help. B2B BNPL works at checkout, order by order, and the buyer sees it as a payment method. Factoring works on invoices you have already issued, which you assign to a factor to have them advanced, managed or guaranteed. The first suits many small or new buyers; the second suits an existing book of receivables.

Sources

If you want to know which payment methods and automations make sense for your B2B store, book a free assessment.