From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishpayback periodpayback perioda) the period of time in which you will make a profit on an investment b) the period of time over which you must pay back money you have borrowed → payback
Examples from the Corpus
payback period• Research allocations are typically modest and payback periods required tend to be short.• Many companies still use incredibly short payback periods, often set by financial directors playing a very risk-averse game.• Companies using this method will usually reject any project which exceeds their target payback period.• Second, , it ignores expected cash flows beyond the payback period.• In other cases a criterion may be needed, and one frequently used is the payback period.• Table 5. 4 presents estimates of the payback period of conversion options on a typical 200 megawatt plant.From Longman Business Dictionarypayback periodˈpayback ˌperiodFINANCE1the time it takes for the profit from an investment to equal the amount of money invested in itThe project has a payback period of two years.2the amount of time over which you are allowed to pay back a loanThe longer the payback period, the more interest you pay on the loan. → period 