Facilitating Payment

Cue the Gambino Family music: facilitating payments. Is it a bribe? Not a bribe? Depends whom you ask and where you are, but even then, you can’t be sure.

Facilitating payments are payments made to government officials as a *wink wink* to expedite some process that would normally have to trudge through red tape. To be clear: a facilitating payment is not related to any official payment you’d need to pay to get some administrative thing done, but is rather a “tip” of sorts to try to make things go faster, or ensure they’ll happen smoothly. The bigger the facilitating payment, the more eyebrows will be raised, and people will wonder if it’s something illegal going on or not...so typically, facilitating payments are on the smaller side.

In some places, facilitating payments are considered sketchy, uncool, and unfair...a kind of bribery. In other places, they’re the norm...part of local customs and expectations, and totally not bribery. Even in places where they're legal, they walk a fine line between ethical and unethical in the business world.