A customer who can afford to pay keeps delaying — can I charge him a late-payment penalty?

Deliberate delay by a solvent debtor is oppression: the Prophet ﷺ said, "The procrastination of a rich man is injustice," so you may demand payment, pursue him through the courts, and refuse him credit in future. What you may not do is add money to the debt because of the delay — increasing a debt in exchange for more time is exactly the ribā of the Jāhiliyyah ("either you pay or you increase it"), and it makes no difference whether the increase is called a penalty, a late fee, or compensation for loss. Contemporary fiqh bodies agree that nothing extra may enter the creditor's own pocket: some standards (such as AAOIFI's standard on the procrastinating debtor) permit a clause obliging a wilful defaulter to donate a stated amount to charity as a deterrent, while other scholars, and the OIC Islamic Fiqh Academy in its rulings on penalty clauses, hold that no monetary charge may attach to a debt at all, since that is ribā itself. Distinguish the wilful from the genuinely broke: if he is truly insolvent you are commanded to give respite, "And if someone is in hardship, then postponement until a time of ease; and that you give it as charity is better for you, if you only knew."

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