Fair Payment Code Signatory vs Non-Signatory Days to Pay Benchmark
In our matched sample, Fair Payment Code signatories pay suppliers a median of 25 days, against 32 days for non-signatories, a gap of 7 days. This is based on 142 companies that appear in both the Small Business Commissioner's FPC awardees register and the statutory Payment Practices Reporting dataset, out of 779 total FPC awardees, not the full register.
Compiled by Market Invoice · Days to pay by sector
Sample size, stated plainly: The FPC register lists 779 awardees; 753 of those have both an award tier and a usable Companies House number. Of those 753, 142 distinct companies filed a matching statutory Payment Practices report in the same 12-month window used elsewhere on this site. Payment Practices Reporting only covers large companies above a statutory size threshold, so most FPC signatories (many of which are SMEs) do not appear in this dataset at all. 142 of 779 is the true matched sample this benchmark is based on, not the full register.
Median days to pay by award tier
| Group | Reports | Median days to pay | Mean days to pay |
|---|---|---|---|
| FPC Gold | 30 | 13.5 | 15 |
| FPC Silver | 75 | 24 | 23.1 |
| FPC Bronze | 169 | 27 | 27.3 |
| All FPC signatories (matched) | 274 | 25 | 24.8 |
| Non-signatories | 10961 | 32 | 34.8 |
| Group | Reports | Median days to pay | Mean days to pay |
|---|---|---|---|
| FPC Gold | 30 | 13.5 | 15 |
| FPC Silver | 75 | 24 | 23.1 |
| FPC Bronze | 169 | 27 | 27.3 |
| All FPC signatories (matched) | 274 | 25 | 24.8 |
| Non-signatories | 10961 | 32 | 34.8 |
Source: Market Invoice, joining the Small Business Commissioner's FPC awardees register to statutory Payment Practices Reporting filings (CC BY 4.0)
The FPC register lists 779 awardees; 753 of those have both an award tier and a usable Companies House number. Of those 753, 142 distinct companies filed a matching statutory Payment Practices report in the same 12-month window used elsewhere on this site. Payment Practices Reporting only covers large companies above a statutory size threshold, so most FPC signatories (many of which are SMEs) do not appear in this dataset at all. 142 of 779 is the true matched sample this benchmark is based on, not the full register.
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### FPC signatory vs non-signatory days to pay, 142 matched companies | Group | Reports | Median days to pay | Mean days to pay | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | FPC Gold | 30 | 13.5 | 15 | | FPC Silver | 75 | 24 | 23.1 | | FPC Bronze | 169 | 27 | 27.3 | | All FPC signatories (matched) | 274 | 25 | 24.8 | | Non-signatories | 10961 | 32 | 34.8 | Source: Market Invoice, joining the Small Business Commissioner's FPC awardees register to statutory Payment Practices Reporting filings (CC BY 4.0) The FPC register lists 779 awardees; 753 of those have both an award tier and a usable Companies House number. Of those 753, 142 distinct companies filed a matching statutory Payment Practices report in the same 12-month window used elsewhere on this site. Payment Practices Reporting only covers large companies above a statutory size threshold, so most FPC signatories (many of which are SMEs) do not appear in this dataset at all. 142 of 779 is the true matched sample this benchmark is based on, not the full register.
Download the matched data (CSV)
“The gradient (Gold fastest, Bronze slowest of the three, both well ahead of non-signatories) is consistent with the Fair Payment Code's own tier definitions, Gold requires 95% of invoices paid within 30 days, Bronze only within 60. That the real statutory data lines up with the code's own design is a genuinely interesting finding, but 142 companies is still a small sample against 10,961 non-signatory reports, so treat the exact day-counts as indicative rather than precise.”
Methodology
We downloaded the Small Business Commissioner's full Fair Payment Code awardees register (Companies House number, award tier, sector, region, expiry year) and the full statutory Payment Practices Reporting export, then matched the two on Companies House number, keeping only PPR reports whose reporting period ended within the same rolling 12-month window used on our days to pay by sector page. A company appearing in both datasets contributes its actual reported average time to pay; nothing is estimated for companies that appear only in one dataset or the other.
This dataset is published under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence. You may reuse it with attribution to Market Invoice (marketinvoice.co.uk).
Common questions
Do Fair Payment Code signatories actually pay faster?
In our matched sample, yes: FPC signatories had a median of 25 days to pay against 32 days for non-signatories, a gap of 7 days. Gold-tier signatories were fastest at a median of 13.5 days, in line with Gold's own 95%-within-30-days requirement.
How many companies is this actually based on?
142 distinct companies, from 274 statutory reports, out of 779 total FPC awardees. Most FPC signatories are not large companies and so don't fall under the separate statutory duty to publish payment practices data, which is why the matched sample is much smaller than the full register.
Why isn’t this benchmark based on all 779 FPC awardees?
The Fair Payment Code register and the statutory Payment Practices Reporting duty are two separate schemes with different coverage. FPC signatories include many SMEs; PPR only applies to large companies and LLPs above a statutory turnover, balance sheet or employee threshold. A company can be a genuine FPC signatory without ever filing a PPR report, and vice versa. We can only compute a real days-to-pay figure for the subset that appears in both.
Cite this dataset
To reference these figures, please credit MarketInvoice and link to this page:
Source: MarketInvoice, Fair Payment Code Signatory vs Non-Signatory Days to Pay Benchmark, https://marketinvoice.co.uk/data/fair-payment-code-signatory-benchmark/ (accessed 2026-09-23).
Founder & Managing Director, Muswell Rose, founder and PSC of Best Business Loans Ltd
Adam is the founder and managing director of Muswell Rose and a founder of Best Business Loans Ltd, the company behind Market Invoice. He spent over three years as managing director of Penny, a UK invoice finance business, and his career runs through insurance, mortgages, commercial finance and fintech lending. He writes the Market Invoice library.
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