Instant Payments Take Center Stage as Construction Confronts Its Cash Flow Crisis

Construction timelines depend on precision, coordination and confidence, but slow payments continue to undermine all three. Across the industry, contractors report that late disbursements are far more damaging than weather or materials issues. These late payments create cascading delays that fracture schedules, inflate bids and weaken trust between owners and crews. As financing pressures rise and margins tighten, the cost of slow payments is becoming untenable, prompting construction firms to reassess how liquidity and payment speed shape both project delivery and competitiveness.

A recent industry study finds that 70% of general contractors and subcontractors regularly encounter payment delays. Separate research shows that 47% of construction pros say these setbacks add one to two weeks to project timelines. Nearly 30% report delays of three to six weeks. These disruptions require contractors to reassign crews, scale back work or halt construction projects entirely—decisions that erode productivity and increase operational costs. The financial ripple effects are equally significant. Contractors pad bids by an average of 8% to protect against cash flow gaps. Sixty percent say an owner’s payment reliability influences whether they bid at all.

Delays also expose structural weaknesses inside firms. According to industry data, the real source of late payments isn’t macroeconomic stress but internal process failures. Disorganized workflows add nearly $300 billion in drag to the construction industry each year, while subcontractors increasingly file liens to mitigate risk. General contractors spend more than 60 hours per month managing payments—time they could devote to coordinating work and reducing on-site risk.

But the momentum for change in the construction industry is growing. Seventy-six percent of contractors are willing to offer discounts for guaranteed faster payments. Eighty-two percent are open to digital systems that accelerate cash flow. Government-led modernization—from federal adoption of instant rails to new state-level penalties for late payments—is pushing the construction industry toward faster, more predictable disbursements.

Faster payments won’t fix every challenge, but they can eliminate one of its biggest and most solvable sources of instability.

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About “Construction Payments Need an Instant Lift”

The “Money Mobility Tracker®,” a collaboration with Ingo Payments, explores how slow payments drive construction delays, inflate costs and weaken trust—and how faster, instant disbursements can stabilize cash flow and strengthen project delivery.