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Start with licensing, not features
Most provider evaluations start with the product demo. That is the wrong order. Features can be matched by several providers; licensing cannot be retrofitted, and it determines whether the provider can legally serve you in the markets that matter.
Ask for the licence or registration number, the issuing regulator and the permitted activities, not a statement that they are “fully regulated”.
Check the licence covers the specific countries where you will collect and pay out, not just their headquarters jurisdiction.
Verify the registration independently on the regulator’s public register where one exists.
Confirm whether the entity you are contracting with is the licensed entity, or an affiliate relying on someone else’s permissions.
Providers that take this seriously publish it. Yellow Card’s licences and registrations are listed publicly for exactly this reason.
Check who actually holds your money
Where your balance sits between receipt and payout is the single most important question in the diligence, and the one most often answered vaguely.
Are client funds segregated from the provider’s own operating funds, and held with whom?
For stablecoin balances, which custodian holds the keys and under what arrangement?
What happens to your balance if the provider enters administration?
Is there an audit or attestation you can read, and how recent is it?
If these answers require escalation to a second call, treat that as information in itself.
Advertised settlement times describe the best case in the best corridor. Your experience will be set by your own corridors, at your own volumes, on your own cut-off times.
Run a pilot in each material corridor before signing, and record actual arrival times.
Test around weekends, public holidays and local cut-offs, where most delays originate.
Measure the failure rate and how failures are communicated, not just the success path.
Confirm whether the provider settles locally or hands off to a partner for the last mile.
A provider’s compliance programme becomes your exposure. Weak controls upstream produce frozen payments, de-risked accounts and questions from your own banking partners.
Who owns compliance, and do they report independently of commercial leadership?
What transaction monitoring and sanctions screening is in place, and against which lists?
How are blockchain analytics used, and what happens when a counterparty address is flagged?
What is the process and timeline when a payment of yours is held for review?
Resilience is the difference between a provider that recovers quietly and one whose incidents become your incidents.
Is there a public status page and a history of incident reports you can read?
Are there redundant settlement paths in each corridor, or a single dependency?
What support hours apply, and in which time zones are the staff who can resolve a stuck payment?
How long has the provider operated in your markets, and through what conditions?
Pricing comparisons fail when they compare headline fees. Landed cost is the fee plus the FX spread plus deductions plus the cost of payments that do not arrive first time.
Ask for the all-in cost on a representative payment in each corridor, in writing.
Establish whether the quoted FX rate is held, and for how long, at your trade size.
Check minimums, volume commitments, dormancy charges and early termination terms.
Clarify notice periods for pricing changes and for withdrawal of a corridor.
Some answers should end the evaluation rather than prompt a follow-up.
Reluctance to name the licensed entity or to provide a registration number.
No clear answer on where client funds are held or whether they are segregated.
Guaranteed settlement times with no corridor-level qualification.
Pricing that cannot be stated as an all-in landed cost.
Pressure to sign before a pilot can be completed.
Work through the checklist in order. Licensing and custody are disqualifying criteria. If they do not hold up, nothing further matters. Settlement, compliance and resilience separate the remaining candidates. Commercial terms decide between providers that are otherwise equivalent.
Imagine a business paying contractors across three African markets shortlists four providers. Two cannot evidence local licensing in two of the three markets and are removed. A third quotes an attractive fee but cannot state a landed cost or hold its FX rate at the required size. The fourth is more expensive on paper but settles locally under its own licences, with a measured failure rate under one percent in pilot. The fourth is the cheaper option once failed payments and chasing time are counted.
Verify Trust Before You Compare Features
The providers worth shortlisting are the ones that answer licensing, custody and settlement questions directly and in writing. Everything else is a product comparison, and product comparisons only matter once trust is established.
Learn more about Yellow Card and how we approach licensing, local settlement and compliance across African markets.
