Qonto Launches Free Monthly SME Data Platform Across Four European Markets

Qonto has launched Qonto Insights, a free public dashboard of SME cash flow benchmarks Europe-wide, drawn from anonymised transactions at businesses in France, Germany, Italy and Spain and refreshed on the 7th of each month.

The first edition, covering September, puts the median business at 18.5 days of cash runway and finds that 31.6% of invoices settled that month were paid late. Both figures come from Qonto’s own customer base, which the company says numbers more than 750,000 SMEs and freelancers.

For accountants and finance teams the question is whether a bank’s customer data can stand in for the wider market. Practices that build cash flow forecasting for clients have long lacked a free, monthly, cross-border reference point. Qonto is offering one, with limits it states itself.

What the SME cash flow benchmarks Europe show

The median business held 18.5 days of cash runway in September, up 0.4 days from August. France recorded the highest national median at 19.4 days. Italy recorded the lowest at 9.5 days.

Across the four markets, 7.4% of businesses fell into a negative balance at least once during the month, down 0.2 percentage points from August.

Late payments moved the other way. Some 31.6% of invoices settled in September were paid late, rising to 38.9% in Spain. The average delay lengthened to 58.6 days, 10.8 days more than in August. The average value of a late invoice fell to €3,900.

The AI adoption index showed 16.7% of SMEs paying for at least one AI subscription through Qonto, against 10% at the start of the year. Average monthly spending on AI tools reached €34.46, up €8.02 in a single month.

International activity was steady. About 20.6% of SMEs conducted business across borders. Germany had the highest share at 23.5%, with payments spanning 154 countries. Among businesses with 10 or more employees, 35.1% sent or received cross-border payments.

How Qonto defines its cash flow indicators

The Cash Buffer Index measures how long a business could keep operating on its current cash balance if it received no further income. It reports the median number of days, the share of businesses holding at least one month of cash, and the share that go into a negative balance during the month.

The Late Payments Index counts paid B2B invoices that were settled more than seven calendar days after the due date. The seven-day window is meant to keep short administrative delays out of the figure.

The detail matters for anyone using the numbers. According to Qonto’s methodology note, only payments matched to an invoice on Qonto’s platform are counted. Invoices raised elsewhere and paid into a Qonto account do not appear.

Invoices whose due date falls before the issue date are dropped, as are organisations with no paid invoices. Industries follow NACE codes, grouped into five broader sectors. Company size comes from Qonto’s internal data, and country reflects the registered country of the business.

The runway metric is a balance-based measure, not a forecast. It says nothing about receivables due or credit lines available. Advisers used to the burn rate and cash runway calculations run on a client’s full books should treat the Qonto figure as a snapshot of one bank account.

Anonymisation and the limits of the sample

Qonto said its business intelligence teams aggregate and anonymise the transaction data before publication. Results appear only as percentages, averages and medians. The company also applies minimum-threshold and suppression rules to prevent individual customers from being identified or confidential business patterns inferred.

Qonto does not publish the number of businesses behind each monthly figure, nor the sector or size mix of the sample. It has not set out the legal basis under GDPR for using customer transaction data in this way. The 750,000 figure covers customers in eight countries, while the dashboard draws on four.

The company is explicit on one point. Both index pages say the data should not be read as reflective of the European market as a whole. It captures only signals within Qonto’s customers and product ecosystem.

That caveat is the central one. A customer base of digitally minded firms that chose a neobank is unlikely to mirror a population of more than 30 million SMEs, which Qonto says make up 99% of European businesses and employ more than 100 million people. Newer, smaller and more digital firms are probably over-represented. Qonto has not published how far that skews the results.

The Italian result illustrates the problem. A median of 9.5 days against 19.4 in France could reflect real differences in trading conditions. It could equally reflect who banks with Qonto in each country.

SME cash flow benchmarks Europe have few free rivals

Qonto’s pitch is timeliness. Alexandre Prot, co-founder and chief executive, said the platform puts “real-time, real-world data behind hunches and hypotheticals, with trends that are updated every month”. He described the data as “behavior-based” and “more timely than ever”.

Official sources and survey-based benchmarks tend to arrive quarterly or annually and rely on responses from businesses. A monthly series built on actual payments is different in kind, though narrower in coverage.

On late payment, the legal baseline is the EU’s 2011 late payment directive. It sets 30 days as the default payment term in business-to-business trade and 60 days as the general ceiling unless parties agree otherwise and the term is not grossly unfair. A proposed regulation to cap terms at 30 days, published by the European Commission in September 2023, has not been adopted.

Qonto’s 58.6-day average delay is therefore a measure of lateness beyond the due date, not a payment term. Practitioners comparing it with their own clients’ debtor days should check that both are measured from the same starting point.

Using the data for client advisory and forecasting

The dashboard publishes medians, shares and averages by country, which suits conversations with clients about how they compare with peers. A client in Spain collecting invoices at a pace in line with a 38.9% late rate is not an outlier on this evidence.

It is less suited to building a forecast. A 13-week cash flow forecast depends on a client’s own receipts, payment terms and customer behaviour. A national median adds context to the assumptions, not the assumptions themselves.

Firms that track benchmarks for clients, such as the dashboard metrics accountants use for their own practices, can add the Qonto series as an external comparator. They should label it as a Qonto customer measure in any client report.

The AI adoption and international transaction indexes are less relevant to cash management. They may help advisers gauge how quickly small clients are taking up new tools and cross-border trade, again within the limits of Qonto’s base.

What comes next for Qonto Insights

Qonto said the platform is intended to provide raw data rather than commentary. It plans to add periodic “Qonto Insights: Explained” features examining country-level findings, comparing markets and exploring trends across the four indexes.

The second edition, covering October, is due on November 7. It will show whether the September jump in average payment delay was a one-month movement or the start of a trend.