Confirming in Spain, in figures
A quarter of Spain’s GDP already moves through factoring and confirming. Confirming is the larger half, and the one growing. The numbers, where they come from, and what they mean for a mid-market buyer.
In this guide
The market in one lineConfirming versus factoringWhy Spain invented confirmingLate payment, the other numberWhat it means for a mid-market buyerWhere the product is goingSourcesThe market in one line
In 2025 Spanish companies ceded €269,885 million of invoices to factoring and confirming, 1.2 % more than the year before. Credits managed reached €401,361 million, about 24.5 % of GDP. Nobody in Spain has to be taught what confirming is; it is a bank product a quarter of the economy deep.
Confirming versus factoring
The two halves are not moving the same way. Confirming, where a buyer’s bank pays the buyer’s suppliers, reached €141,901 million, up 4.1 %. Factoring, where a supplier cedes its own receivables, reached €127,984 million, down 1.8 %. The buyer-side product is the larger half and the one growing.
That matters because the two products answer the same late-payment problem from opposite ends. Factoring asks the small company to prove itself. Confirming asks the large buyer to confirm what it already owes. The market is voting for the second.
Why Spain invented confirming
Confirming is a Spanish word for a Spanish invention: reverse factoring built around the buyer’s payment order, first offered by Spanish banks in the 1990s. It spread because Spanish supply chains run on long terms and large anchor companies, and because the bank already knew the buyer. The product has barely changed since: it still lives in the bank’s systems, on paper approvals, mostly for large corporates.
Late payment, the other number
The legal payment limit between companies in Spain is 60 days. The observed average for SMEs in 2025 was 80.5 days, and only 30.4 % of invoices were paid on time, according to CEPYME’s late-payment observatory. The gap between the law and the practice is the working capital that confirming, factoring and dynamic discounting exist to bridge.
What it means for a mid-market buyer
Confirming has mostly been a large-corporate product because it was expensive to set up: a bank project, paper approvals, a supplier onboarding effort nobody wanted to run. The mid-market buyer with two hundred suppliers and an ERP was left with factoring on the supplier side and nothing on its own.
That is the gap a buyer programme fills: the buyer approves invoices once, on the platform, suppliers join when the buyer invites them, and the bank underwrites one name. How a buyer programme works →
Where the product is going
Inside the ERP, and onto evidence. The e-invoicing mandate will make the buyer’s approval a reported event rather than a private one; the same approval, written as an acceptance certificate, is what lets a bank fund a supplier early against the buyer’s name rather than the supplier’s balance sheet. The mandate, explained → · The certificate →
Sources
Asociación Española de Factoring (AEF), El Sector en Cifras, 2025 annual figures: total cessions €269,885M (+1.2 %), factoring €127,984M (−1.8 %), confirming €141,901M (+4.1 %), credits managed €401,361M (+2 %), 24.5 % of GDP. CEPYME, Observatorio de la Morosidad, 2025: average payment period 80.5 days, 30.4 % of invoices paid on time. Figures as published; check the sources for updates.