Stablecoin API RFP template: sections, scoring, and a vendor scorecard

A stablecoin API RFP (request for proposal) is a written document that asks every vendor the same numbered questions about corridors, compliance, custody, integration, reliability, pricing, and contract terms. Score the replies in two passes: pass or fail gates first, then a weighted 1 to 3 score on every criterion, using weights you set before anyone replies.

Most fintechs skip the RFP and go straight to demos. That works until three vendors describe "global coverage" in three different ways and nobody can say which is better. A short, structured RFP fixes that.

Key takeaways

• An RFP is useful because it fixes the questions and the answer format. Comparability is the whole point.
• Set the pass or fail gates and the weights before sending. Changing them after replies arrive invites bias.
• Gates come first: licensing, Travel Rule and sanctions controls, custody model, and live launch corridors.
• Score 1 to 3. A 3 needs proof, such as a document, a public docs link, or a sandbox test.
• Verify the top two vendors in a sandbox before signing. Written answers are claims until tested.

If you are still working out which part of the stack you are buying, read what stablecoin infrastructure is first, then the types of stablecoin APIs. An RFP only works when every vendor on the list is solving the same problem.

What is a stablecoin API RFP?

A stablecoin API RFP is a document a buyer sends to several providers asking for written, structured answers about how the provider would handle the buyer's payment flow. It replaces open-ended sales calls with numbered questions, a response template, a deadline, and a list of required documents.

An RFP is different from a questionnaire. A questionnaire asks a vendor about itself. An RFP starts with your flow (corridors, volumes, users, custody needs) and asks how the vendor would serve it. That framing matters, because a stablecoin API that is strong for card issuing can be weak for local payouts, and only your flow tells you which one you need.

What sections should a stablecoin API RFP include?

A stablecoin API RFP should include eight sections, each with numbered questions and a list of documents to attach. Put your own requirements first, so every answer that follows is about your flow.

Keep the vendor questions to 40 or fewer across all eight sections. Long RFPs get long, vague answers. If you need a deeper question bank for a specific section, the 30 due diligence questions are organized by category and drop into sections 3, 4, 6, and 8.

Which requirements should be pass or fail gates?

Gates are the requirements where a weak answer cannot be offset by a strong score somewhere else. Procurement frameworks for stablecoin payments usually treat licensing, Travel Rule compliance, and the custody model as hard minimums, and most buyers add live corridors.

1. Licensing for your flow. The vendor holds the licenses or registrations needed for the role it plays in your flow, in the markets you pay into. In the US you can check federal money services business registration yourself in FinCEN's MSB registrant search. Which license a stablecoin payment flow needs explains the categories.
2. Travel Rule and sanctions controls. The vendor screens every counterparty and transaction it touches and exchanges originator and beneficiary data where the Travel Rule applies.
3. A written custody model. The vendor states in writing who holds stablecoins, fiat, and keys at every step, and what happens to funds in a payment that fails. Custodial vs non-custodial off-ramps covers why this matters in an insolvency.
4. Launch corridors live in production. Every corridor you need on day one is live today, in the direction you need. Roadmap items do not pass.

A vendor that fails one gate is out. Do not calculate its score. This keeps a cheap or well-documented vendor from winning on points while failing on the one thing that would stop your launch.

How do you score answers on a 1 to 3 scale?

Score each criterion 1, 2, or 3, multiply by its weight, and add up. The short scale forces a decision and makes evidence the difference between a 2 and a 3.

Weights depend on your business. A payroll platform paying contractors in Latin America will weight corridors and settlement heavily. A regulated bank will weight licensing, security, and contract terms. Decide the weights before sending the RFP and write them into the scoring sheet, so nobody adjusts them after a favorite vendor replies.

Two rules keep scoring honest:

• Score per criterion, not per vendor. Score all vendors on criterion 1, then all on criterion 2. Reading one vendor end to end inflates its scores.
• Two scorers per section. Engineering scores technical sections, compliance scores sections 3 and 4, finance scores pricing. Average the two, and discuss any gap of 2 points.

What does a stablecoin API scorecard look like?

A scorecard lists every weighted criterion with blank score columns for each vendor, plus the gates above it. Copy the table below into a spreadsheet and adjust the weights to your flow. The weights shown are an example, not an industry standard.

Gates (pass or fail for each vendor): licensing for your flow, Travel Rule and sanctions controls, written custody model, launch corridors live.

To get the weighted total, multiply each score by its weight and add the results. A vendor scoring 2 on everything totals 2.00. Anything above 2.50 means most answers came with proof.

For what a good and a bad answer look like on the six criteria that eliminate vendors fastest, see how to choose a stablecoin API.

What questions belong in the technical section?

The technical section should ask how the API behaves when things go wrong, not only how a successful payment works. Every vendor can show a happy path in a demo.

Ask for:

• A link to the public API reference and an OpenAPI description you can generate a client from.
• The list of official SDKs and the languages your team uses.
• Sandbox access without a sales call, and which production behaviors the sandbox does not reproduce. Sandbox vs production lists the usual gaps.
• How to trigger a failed and a refunded payment in the sandbox.
• How write requests stay safe to retry (idempotency keys, and for how long they are stored).
• How webhooks are signed, retried, and replayed, and whether events can arrive out of order. Webhooks and reconciliation covers the patterns.
• The full list of payment statuses and which are terminal.
• Rate limits per endpoint and what the error response looks like.

What should the pricing and contract sections ask?

The pricing section should ask for itemized sample quotes on your real corridors and amounts, and the contract section should ask what happens at the edges: exit, failure, and change.

For pricing, give each vendor the same three payments (for example, your median and largest payment on your top two corridors) and ask for the fee, the exchange rate, the reference rate it was compared to, the network fee, and the amount the recipient receives. Ask separately about monthly fees, minimum volumes, and any balance you must keep with the vendor. Stablecoin API pricing explained shows where fees sit outside the quote.

For the contract, ask about term and termination notice, data export on exit, liability caps, how fee changes are announced, and support response times. If you work with a bank partner, it will likely ask how you chose and monitor the vendor. US bank regulators' 2023 interagency guidance on third-party relationships describes third-party risk management as a life cycle and says not every third party carries the same risk, so a scored RFP file is useful evidence later. For security, a SOC 2 report covers controls relevant to security, availability, processing integrity, confidentiality, or privacy, so ask which report the vendor has and for what period.

What is a realistic RFP timeline?

Plan four to six weeks from first draft to signed contract. The slow parts are vendor answers and compliance review, not scoring.

Share clarifying answers with every vendor, not only the one who asked. Otherwise vendors answer slightly different RFPs.

What are the limits of an RFP?

An RFP measures what vendors say and what their documents show. It does not measure what happens in production, and it rewards vendors that write well.

• Written answers are claims. Settlement windows, failure handling, and support quality only become facts in a sandbox or a small live pilot.
• RFPs favor large vendors. Big providers have teams that answer RFPs every week. A smaller provider with a better fit can lose on polish, so score content, not formatting.
• Weights are judgment. No framework weighting is an industry standard. Two reasonable teams can weight the same criteria differently.
• An RFP does not replace a pilot. Use it to pick two vendors, then test.

How does BlindPay answer a stablecoin API RFP?

BlindPay is a stablecoin payout and collection API: it converts USDC and USDT into local currency over Pix, PIX Safe, TED, SPEI, ACH Colombia, Transfers 3.0, ACH, domestic wire, RTP, SEPA, and SWIFT (POBO/COBO) with UETR tracking and MT103 confirmations, and runs KYC, KYB, and sanctions screening inside the payment flow. It is registered with FinCEN as a Money Services Business (NMLS #2745309), and the status of other licenses is on the licenses page.

For the technical and pricing sections, most answers are public: development instances are free, there is no setup fee or monthly minimum, and SDKs cover Node.js, Python, Go, PHP, and Swift, as listed in the SDK reference. Every payout quote returns the fee breakdown and the amount the recipient receives, and expires after 5 minutes. A fee schedule endpoint returns the flat and percentage fee per rail and network on your instance. In development, setting a payout's request amount to $666.00 or $777.00 forces a failed or refunded result, so both failure paths are testable before scoring. A refunded payout returns the stablecoins; a failed payout does not refund automatically and goes to support.

To score BlindPay with evidence instead of claims, create a development instance and run the payout quickstart.