How to evaluate a global checkout provider: 12 questions

To evaluate a global checkout provider, score it on 12 questions across six areas: rail coverage per country, fee visibility, developer experience, compliance, settlement and failure handling, and custody. Ask each provider the same questions, score every answer 0 to 2, and test your top two corridors end to end before you sign anything.

This scorecard reflects public information as of October 2026. For the build itself, read the global checkout checklist. For the basics, start with what is a global payments checkout.

Key takeaways

• Ask for a rail map by country. A country count hides whether shoppers pay on Pix, SPEI, or PSE or on an international card.
• Extra costs are the top abandonment reason in Baymard's research at 40%, so the fee has to be visible in a quote before the shopper pays.
• A good sandbox forces failures. On BlindPay development instances, 66600 forces a failed payin and 77700 a refunded one.
• KYB time sets your merchant activation time. BlindPay KYB Standard takes 3 hours to 1 business day.
• Know who holds the funds between payment and payout, and which rails pay them out.

How should you run the evaluation?

Score answers, not demos. Send every provider the same 12 questions, then verify the best two in a sandbox.

1. Write down your first two markets and the rails shoppers there use.
2. Send the 12 questions below to each provider, in writing.
3. Score each answer 0 (no answer or vague), 1 (answered, with gaps), or 2 (specific, documented, testable).
4. Weight the questions your first market depends on. A Brazil launch weights Pix questions double.
5. Test the top two in their sandboxes, running the same checkout on both.
6. Decide on the total, with a hard fail for any 0 on compliance or custody.

What are the 12 questions?

Twelve questions, grouped into six areas. Copy the table into a spreadsheet and fill one column per provider.

The coverage questions come first because they decide conversion. Stripe's test of 50+ payment methods found that surfacing at least one relevant method beyond cards lifted conversion 7.4% and revenue 12% on average, with results varying by method, country, and industry. Do local payment methods raise checkout conversion? breaks those numbers down.

What does a strong answer look like on coverage and limits?

A strong answer names the rail, the currency, and the limit, and you can check all three in the docs.

Ask for specifics, because they differ by provider. Stripe's Pix docs, for example, state settlement of up to 2 business days and limits of US$3,000 per day and US$10,000 per month for each Brazilian customer paying a business outside Brazil. That is the level of detail to expect from every provider on every rail. If an answer stops at "we support Brazil", score it 0.

What does a strong answer look like on pricing?

The fee shows up in a quote before the shopper commits, and the merchant knows exactly what lands.

Baymard's abandonment research lists "extra costs too high" at 40% and "couldn't see or calculate total order cost up front" at 12% among US shoppers who left a cart. A provider that returns a live quote lets you show one total in the shopper's currency. Stripe's localization guide also recommends showing and charging in the buyer's currency through the final charge.

What does a strong answer look like on compliance and custody?

Checks run inside the payment API with stated times, and the provider can say in one sentence who holds the money.

Compliance answers decide activation time. If merchants wait a week for KYB, your sales team waits a week too. Custody answers decide risk: whose name the balance sits in between the shopper's payment and the merchant's withdrawal, and what happens to a payment that cannot complete. Score a vague answer on either as a hard fail. For a deeper vendor diligence process, see the crypto payment processor scorecard.

How does BlindPay answer the 12 questions?

BlindPay is the money layer you build a checkout on. Here is how it answers, from its public docs.

1. Rails: Pix (Brazil), SPEI (Mexico), PSE (Colombia), Transfers 3.0 (Argentina), ACH, wire, RTP, and ACH pull (US).
2. Entity: Each merchant is a BlindPay business customer that passes KYB.
3. Limits: The quote enforces min and max per currency and names the range in its error.
4. Fees: A live payin quote with the local amount, fees, and an expires_at 5 minutes out. Pricing is a monthly plan plus per-transaction fees disclosed in the quote.
5. Exact amount: currency_type: "receiver" with cover_fees: true delivers the full USD price.
6. Take rate: partner_fee_id on the quote, paid out monthly.
7. Sandbox: 66600 forces failed, 77700 forces refunded.
8. Idempotency: Idempotency-Key replays the original response.
9. Webhooks: payin.new, payin.update, payin.complete, signed.
10. Compliance: KYB Standard 3 hours to 1 business day; screening in the flow.
11. Settlement: Pix, SPEI, Transfers 3.0, and PSE typically minutes; on_hold, failed, and refunded statuses.
12. Custody and payouts: Managed wallets (custodial, beta) or a wallet you control; payouts over Pix, SPEI, SEPA, Faster Payments, and SWIFT (POBO/COBO).

Methodology and sources

BlindPay facts come from the payins, payin quotes, partner fees, idempotency, webhooks, and cut-off times docs, read in October 2026. External sources: Stripe's 50+ payment methods test, Stripe's Pix docs, Stripe's localization guide, and Baymard's cart abandonment research. Provider capabilities change, so ask each one to answer in writing with a date.

What to do next

Copy the 12-question table into a spreadsheet, add one column per provider, and send it out this week. Score the answers, then run the same checkout in the top two sandboxes, including one forced failure, before you sign.