Unfiltered with Lochan Sim: Why Australian Businesses Still Struggle to Get Paid

Australian businesses are under increasing pressure to improve cash flow visibility while maintaining efficient operations. Yet many organisations still underestimate the true cost of getting paid.

While transaction fees are often the most visible payment expense, they typically represent only a fraction of the total cost.

• delayed payments.
• manual processing.
• reconciliation challenges.
• payment disputes.
• and administrative overhead.

These can all place additional strain on teams across the business.

These inefficiencies rarely sit within finance alone. Operations teams may be waiting for payment confirmation before progressing work, customer service teams can become involved in payment-related queries, and finance teams often spend valuable time chasing invoices or resolving discrepancies.

When this is repeated across hundreds or thousands of transactions, they can create significant operational costs and unnecessary pressure on cash flow.

How Payment Friction Impacts Cash Flow Across Australian Businesses

One of the biggest misconceptions around payments is that faster payments are simply a finance benefit.

In reality, payment speed directly affects how the wider business operates. When payments are delayed:

• working capital becomes tighter.
• forecasting becomes harder.
• operational planning slows down.
• and more time is spent managing uncertainty.

The impact looks different depending on the size of the business. For larger organisations, even small delays across thousands of transactions can create significant pressure on cash flow.

For smaller businesses, a handful of late payments can have a much more personal impact, affecting day-to-day decisions, investment plans and, ultimately, the business owner's own pocket.

This is why the payment experience itself matters far more than many businesses realise.

Customers rarely delay payments deliberately, this often happens at critical moments:

• a field technician completes work at a customer site, but the payment link isn’t ready.
• a trade services job is finished, but payment hasn't been collected.
• equipment is ready for dispatch, but invoicing is still pending.
• a service engineer leaves site before payment is finalised.

The longer a payment takes to complete, the more likely it is to move into what I often think of as the “later” bucket: “I’ll come back to it later”, “I’ll sort it tomorrow”, “I’ll wait until I’m back at my desk”.

And once that happens, payment behaviour changes completely.

Common Sources of Payment Friction and Their Business Impact

Why Payment Administration Still Consumes Valuable Time

Another hidden cost sits inside the operational effort required to manage payments.

Many businesses have invested heavily in digitising operations, while payment processes remain surprisingly manual.

Often, payment disputes take place over the phone, reconciliation means switching between an ERP, payment provider and accounts package, and reporting is done in spreadsheets, outside of any of these systems.

Finance teams spend huge amounts of time validating information across platforms before they can even begin analysing performance properly.

This creates operational drag that rarely gets measured accurately.

Why Payments Are No Longer Just a Finance Function

This is where I think the industry conversation is starting to shift.

Payments are directly influencing customer conversion, operational efficiency and cash flow. Businesses that reduce payment friction often see wider efficiency benefits:

• Faster payment cycles.
• Fewer disputes.
• Lower admin overhead.
• Better visibility across the business.

The organisations that will manage this best over the next few years are unlikely to be the ones simply chasing lower transaction fees.

They’ll be the ones that understand how payment journeys affect the entire business workflow. Because the cost of getting paid is rarely just the payment itself, it’s everything that happens around it.

Explore our Hidden Costs of Payments guide to learn how Australian businesses can reduce payment delays, streamline reconciliation and improve cash flow visibility.