Grocery stores are paying suppliers faster during COVID-19 crisis

Supermarkets nationwide are paying their suppliers faster today than for the same period one year ago, according Creditsafe, an Allentown-based business credit reporting agency.

DBT or ‘Days beyond Terms’ is a metric used by commercial credit reference agencies to evaluate a company’s payment behavior. A recent analysis on millions of transactions by Creditsafe shows an improvement from five days DBT to a figure below three, almost half of what it was last year.

Creditsafe CEO Matthew Debbage said the increase in buying grocery supplies by the public due to the COVID-19 crisis is benefitting the industry and in turn other industries.

“They are literally putting much-needed cash into the hands of tens of thousands of often-small businesses,” he said in a statement, “across a wide range of sectors, not just food suppliers, but also, for example, the trucking and logistics companies that keep grocery shelves stocked. By doing so, they are helping those businesses pay their suppliers, keep staff on the payroll and boost the wider economy.”