A request for proposal (RFP) is a structured way for your business to compare providers. It positions vendors in a competition against one another and reveals how steady their infrastructure really is, how quickly they pay out, what happens when payment fraud spikes and how they'll keep your business compliant in every market you care about. With only 13% of global business leaders using formal supplier management processes, the RFP is your best opportunity to ask the right questions and discover which provider is right for your business.
Payments RFPs allow you to compare providers on how they handle payments, which impacts cash flow, compliance and customer experience. A well-crafted RFP exposes the trade-offs behind each option, so you can see which provider is prepared to support your business in certain situations, such as when volumes double or regulations change mid-quarter. Below, you'll find the key criteria to prioritise in a payments RFP.
What's in this article?
- What should you always include in an RFP for payment processing?
- How do you compare technical capabilities between providers?
- Which compliance and security certifications should you require?
- What's the best way to measure customer support and account management in proposals?
- What pricing details should you ask providers to break down in an RFP?
- How do you evaluate integration with your existing systems?
- How do you weigh reporting, analytics and dashboard features in RFP responses?
- Which KPIs matter most when comparing RFP responses?
- How do you identify warning signs in vendor proposals?
- How Stripe Payments can help
What should you always include in an RFP for payment processing?
The goal of a payments RFP is to gather consistent, comparable answers from every provider so you can see which one is a right fit for your business. That means spelling out your requirements in detail and leaving no room for vague responses. By including the following sections, you'll lay the groundwork for a side-by-side comparison of providers, allowing you to determine who is best suited to meet your business needs.
Company and project overview
Start by grounding vendors in your business. Share your business model, average transaction volume, customer base and growth goals. Be up front about specific challenges, whether it's fraud, global expansion or subscription billing. Without that context, it's easy for vendors to give generic answers that don't help you evaluate fit.
Required payment capabilities
List the exact payment methods and channels you need today and might need tomorrow. If you sell internationally, call out currencies and local payment methods. Missing an important method can mean losing sales, so force providers to confirm support for each option. You'll quickly see which providers have breadth and which ones have options that are more limited.
Technical and integration requirements
Payments need to fit into the systems you already use. That could mean your e-commerce platform, enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, customer relationship management (CRM) platforms, mobile app or a custom technology stack. In your RFP, describe your systems and ask how the provider integrates with them, so you can understand what that process will look like.
Security and compliance
Require providers to confirm compliance with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS), ideally Level 1, and ask for proof. Include other standards and practices that might be relevant to your business: the System and Organization Controls (SOC) such as SOC 1 and SOC 2 reports, the EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) compliance, encryption practices, tokenisation, fraud prevention and their incident response plan.
Reporting and analytics
Payments data is only useful if you can access and use it. Describe in detail the reporting you need: real-time dashboards, transaction-level exports, custom reports, application programming interface (API) access for your data warehouse and reconciliation tools.
Customer support and account management
What happens when something breaks? Ask for details on support availability, support channels, service level agreements (SLAs) for response times and account management.
Pricing structure
Pricing comparisons fall apart when vendors present costs differently, so dictate the format. Require an itemised breakdown: setup fees, monthly fees, per-transaction charges, interchange or scheme fees, cross-border costs, chargeback fees, currency conversion markups and any extras such as fraud tools or recurring billing.
References and track record
Ask for case studies and references from businesses that are similar to yours, whether by industry, business model or transaction volume. Speaking to current clients can often be the most revealing part of the process.
Proposal instructions and timeline
Finally, set the ground rules. Provide a clear outline for how you want responses structured and the deadlines for each step – questions, submissions, demos, etc. The RFP process, in itself, tests each provider's attention to detail.
How do you compare technical capabilities between providers?
In a technical evaluation, you separate a payment provider that can keep up with your business from one you'll outgrow. Compare the numbers, check their capabilities and pay attention to extras, such as tokenisation and retry logic. If the infrastructure falters, your revenue falters. See what a provider's system is really built to do by asking about the below features.
Reliability and uptime
Every minute of downtime can negatively impact sales. Ask for hard numbers: historical uptime, SLAs and how they handle redundancy. The difference between 99.95% uptime and 99.999% is actually significant. Press vendors to explain how they keep processing online if a data centre goes down.
Stripe, for example, is trusted by large enterprises to provide uninterrupted service during peak shopping periods such as Black Friday and Cyber Monday (99.9999% reliability in 2024). Stripe is the only provider to transparently publish API uptime in real time.
Scalability and performance
A good partner should handle holiday traffic or a sudden surge in demand without checkout lag. Look for data points such as stress test results or maximum transactions per second to get a sense of how each provider maintains good performance under a heavy load. Vendors that run on cloud-native, auto-scaling infrastructure usually adapt better to spikes than those with fixed capacity.
Payment methods and channels
Breadth matters. If you sell globally, you'll need to be able to accept digital wallets, local bank transfers and region-specific methods for a good customer experience. In your RFP, ask which methods a provider supports today and how quickly they can enable new ones. A partner that can activate iDEAL and Klarna in days will keep you competitive in Europe, whilst one that takes a long time to set things up could risk higher cart abandonment.
Stripe helps businesses enter new markets fast with a single integration for turning on more than 75 payment methods and Link, an accelerated checkout, helping businesses boost revenue and save thousands of engineering hours with prebuilt user interfaces (UIs).
Global reach and local expertise
Global capability comes down to local acquiring relationships, settlement in multiple currencies and checkout flows that feel native in every market. Providers with local banking connections and multilingual checkout can make a difference in boosting conversion rates abroad.
API quality and developer experience
Your developers will probably work with a provider's API, so think of it as part of the product itself. Ask to review the documentation. Are endpoints modern? Do they conform to widely used API architectural styles, such as representational state transfer (REST)? Look for a provider that treats their API like a first-class product.
Stripe offers an easy, flexible integration experience with technical documentation, developer-friendly APIs, customisation options, low and no-code tools, embedded components and Stripe-managed risk.
Innovation and advanced features
The best providers can also help you hold on to more money. Features such as card account updaters (a method that helps ensure saved cards stay valid), smart retries on failed charges and machine learning fraud protection are the kind of technical details that can help businesses retain revenue.
Stripe, for example, built the industry's first AI foundation model for payments, which detects 97% of card testing attacks on large businesses.
Which compliance and security certifications should you require?
Your RFP should make providers demonstrate that they meet the highest security standards and that they'll keep you compliant everywhere you operate. Look for a culture of transparency too: willingness to share audits, walk you through their processes and answer hard questions directly. A single weak link, whether in compliance or data handling, can expose you to fines, breaches and lost customer trust.
Here are the security and compliance features you'll want from your provider.
PCI DSS level 1
Start with the baseline: PCI DSS. Any processor should be PCI-compliant, but the gold standard is Level 1 service provider certification: it's the highest tier, and it's audited annually. Ask for their current Attestation of Compliance.
SOC 1 and SOC 2
Independent audits, such as SOC reports, also matter. A SOC 1 report verifies a potential vendor's financial reporting controls, whilst a SOC 2 report reviews security practices.
Data privacy laws
Your vendors will be expected to follow different data privacy laws depending on their region. If you serve customers in Europe, you need a processor that can demonstrate GDPR compliance. In California, the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) applies. Companies in Brazil should observe the General Personal Data Protection Act (LGPD). Your RFP should ask where payment data is stored, how it's transferred and which legal frameworks it complies with. The right partner will be able to discuss these details without hesitation.
Encryption and tokenisation
Beyond certifications, inquire about technical practices. Ask how card data is encrypted while moving across networks (i.e. in transit) and while stored (i.e. at rest). Confirm that they tokenise card numbers at the point of capture so raw primary account numbers (PANs) never touch your systems. Ask how they manage encryption keys: for example, they might use hardware security modules (HSMs).
Fraud and risk compliance
Staying compliant with card network rules and regional regulations is an important part of fraud prevention. In Europe, that means Strong Customer Authentication (SCA) under the revised Payment Services Directive (PSD2). Ask if the provider supports authentication methods such as 3D Secure. If you're working with marketplaces or platforms, dig into how they handle Know Your Customer (KYC) and Anti-Money Laundering (AML) requirements.
Security operations
What matters day-to-day is how a provider manages threats. Use the RFP to probe their security procedures. Do they run continuous monitoring and intrusion detection? How do they protect against distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks? How often do they conduct penetration tests? Do they have a dedicated security team?
Ask about their incident response plan too: how quickly they notify customers and what steps they take if there's a breach. A good provider should be able to describe the process in detail.
What's the best way to measure customer support and account management in proposals?
Support is an ongoing relationship. In your RFP, press for clear commitments on availability, response times, account management and onboarding. Providers that share concrete details are the ones that will stand up under pressure – when you need them most.
Below are some criteria to consider.
Support channels and availability
Start with the basics: when and how can you reach them? Ask if support is available 24/7, including weekends and holidays and through which channels (e.g. phone, chat, email). If you operate internationally, confirm they provide multilingual support.
Response times and SLAs
Ask providers to share their SLAs: average response time for a critical outage, average resolution time and whether these guarantees are contractual.
Account management
Beyond emergency fixes, you want someone advocating for your business. Ask whether you'll have a dedicated account manager or customer success manager. Will they schedule quarterly business reviews? Will they track your business's performance metrics and suggest improvements? These details distinguish a transactional vendor from a strategic partner.
Implementation and ongoing support
Getting live is its own hurdle, so ask about implementation resources. Do they assign onboarding specialists? Provide integration engineers? Offer training for your team? These methods of support can all help shorten your path to launch.
References and metrics
Support quality can be hard to measure on paper, so push for concrete proof. Ask for references who can speak specifically about support and account management. Some providers track Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT) or Net Promoter Score (NPS) for their support teams. A proposal with real customer satisfaction data shows confidence in their support model.
What pricing details should you ask providers to break down in an RFP?
The fee structure for each provider can vary greatly, and if you let them present costs in their own format, it can be challenging to make a clear comparison. The best way to get a fair read is to dictate the breakdown yourself.
Here's what you should always ask to see.
Transaction fees
Start with the core: per-transaction pricing. Some vendors quote a flat percentage plus a fixed fee. Others use interchange-plus, passing through the card network's exact fee plus a markup. Either way, require them to show rates by card type and for non-card methods. Also specify domestic versus cross-border, since international transactions can carry higher fees.
Monthly and fixed charges
Ask about recurring charges: payment gateway fees, statement fees or monthly minimums. Some providers waive them, whilst others bake them in. Clarify exactly what a monthly fee covers. If your volume fluctuates, make sure you won't be penalised for dipping below a certain threshold.
One-time and setup costs
Some providers charge setup or onboarding fees. Others might charge for migration services, especially if you're moving stored payment tokens over from a prior processor. Request detailed information on all this in your RFP.
Chargebacks and disputes
Many processors charge a flat fee per dispute, plus the cost of the transaction itself. Ask vendors to state their chargeback fee clearly and explain whether they charge extra for representment (i.e. fighting the dispute). Some might also come with chargeback management services or insurance – if so, get the pricing details up front.
Add-on services
Fraud tools, advanced authentication, subscription billing, invoicing modules, tokenisation and recurring billing all might carry incremental charges. Ask vendors to price out each feature, even if you don't need them today. You'll want a baseline if your business expands later.
Foreign exchange and settlement costs
Cross-border payments bring another layer: currency conversion fees. Some providers pass through network rates plus a markup, while others add their own spread. If you want to settle in multiple currencies, ask if that's supported and whether there's a fee. These costs can stack quickly for global businesses, so surface them early.
Volume discounts and tiers
Many providers are open to tiered pricing models – for instance, a lower percentage once you cross a certain transaction volume. Ask for rate cards that show thresholds at different levels of monthly processing, even if you're smaller now. Confirm how long rates are guaranteed and whether you're locked into an annual review or renegotiation cycle.
Contracts and hidden fees
Some surprises only show up in the fine print. Use your RFP to sort out any early termination penalties, PCI compliance fees, paper statement fees or non-qualified surcharges. Ask about contract terms directly: is it month-to-month, annual or multi-year? Do fees auto-renew? The answers here can save you costly lock-ins down the road.
Structured breakdowns
A strong RFP structures the numbers you're receiving in a way that's helpful for you. Provide a pricing template with every possible fee line item – from transaction costs down to currency conversion – and require vendors to either enter a value or mark it "not applicable". When the proposals come back, you'll have what you need: a clean, side-by-side comparison of the real costs of each provider.
How do you evaluate integration with your existing systems?
Switching payment providers means integrating someone else's technology into your stack. If that process drags, you could lose time, money and momentum. Your RFP should make vendors prove how well their systems actually fit with yours. Look for specifics on software development kits (SDKs), documentation and onboarding support and compare vendors on how quickly and easily they can get you live.
Here's what you should assess.
Compatibility with your stack
Start by detailing what you run on: your e-commerce platform, ERP, CRM, mobile apps and backend languages. Then ask vendors for specifics. Do they have SDKs in your languages? Prebuilt plugins for platforms such as Shopify, Salesforce or Adobe Commerce? If you're mostly custom, is their API flexible enough to adapt? The less you have to patch together, the faster you can get live.
API quality and documentation
Review their docs. Are endpoints modern? Do they have clear error codes, code samples and client libraries in your preferred coding language? A strong API comes with a sandbox environment and test cards so you can simulate real flows before launch.
Time to go live
Ask vendors for their average timeline from contract to first live transaction. Some can get you live in weeks, whilst others can take months. Push for more detail, such as the number of engineers typically required and the specific resources the provider will assign.
Workflow fit
Payments data has to flow through finance, operations and support. Use your RFP to ask about reconciliation features (e.g. can they map payouts back to transaction IDs and fees?), webhook support (for real-time notifications) and integrations with your accounting or business intelligence (BI) platforms. Exporting CSVs and stitching them together every month will cost you time and effort.
Testing and certification
Ask if they provide test data, mock cards and event simulations. Check whether they require a formal certification process before you go live, as it can add weeks to the timeline. An up-to-date platform usually lets you self-certify with sandbox testing and flip the switch when you're ready.
Future flexibility
Ask how the provider supports future channels, such as in-app payments, new storefronts or international launches. Can you build your own checkout UI, or are you locked into theirs? Can you expand without redoing your integration? Providers with multiple paths – server-side, client-side and hosted – give you options as your business evolves.
How do you weigh reporting, analytics and dashboard features in RFP responses?
Payments data powers decision-making across operations, product and support teams. But providers can vary significantly in how they surface that data. Your RFP should dig into what tools you'll actually get to understand and enhance your business. A provider that gives you real-time, customisable, exportable data can help save you time and help you spot revenue opportunities.
Here are some features you should look for.
Unified view
If you sell across multiple channels or regions, ask whether the provider consolidates everything into a single dashboard. Can you see online, in-app and in-store transactions side by side? Can you filter by region or currency? A unified view prevents your team from having to stitch together reports across systems.
Real-time reporting
Look for refresh rates. Some processors still update once a day, which can be too infrequent for tracking live performance. Choose a system that can push data into dashboards within seconds or minutes.
Custom reports and data access
Can you build custom reports? Export data in CSV or Excel? Pull it via API or webhook into your BI tool or warehouse? Some advanced providers can also give you Structured Query Language (SQL)-like access or prebuilt data pipelines for even more control over your data.
Dashboard experience
Your finance team isn't the only user. Support also needs to be able to look up transactions and issue refunds, Product needs conversion data and senior executives need high-level charts. A strong dashboard supports all of them with filters, drill-downs and intuitive search.
Reconciliation assistance
Ideally, your provider will have payout reports that tie every deposit back to individual transactions and fees. If not, you'll have to rebuild that logic manually every month.
Which KPIs matter most when comparing RFP responses?
Once the proposals are in, the sheer volume of detail can blur together. A consistent set of metrics can help you compare vendors on what really impacts revenue and operations. Put them into a comparison matrix and weigh them by your priorities to see which provider can really deliver value.
Here are the key performance indicators (KPIs) you should always evaluate.
Authorisation and acceptance rates
Every failed authorisation can mean lost revenue, especially as you scale. Vendors might not give you raw rates, since they vary by merchant profile, but press them on how they optimise (e.g. smart retry logic, card updaters, local acquiring relationships). Look for data points or case studies showing how they've improved approval rates.
Uptime and availability
Uptime is the measure of how often a payment system is available and working. Even small differences here can have vast financial consequences. Ask for historical uptime and SLAs that detail remedies if they miss targets.
Settlement speed
How quickly funds hit your bank account has a direct impact on cash flow. Many providers now offer instant payouts, usually for a fee. Clarify the standard payout schedule and ask whether faster settlement is an option if needed.
Effective cost per transaction
When it comes to transaction rates, headline rates can be misleading. To make comparisons fair, run a cost model: apply each provider's pricing schedule to your transaction mix. The result is a blended effective rate that tells you how much of every pound processed ends up as fees. This can help make it easy to see which providers are truly more affordable and which ones just market effectively.
Fraud and chargeback rates
Strong providers will offer tools that help reduce the risk of fraud, such as machine learning fraud models, built-in 3D Secure or automated dispute responses. Some might also offer chargeback guarantees. Ask for benchmarks or aggregate customer data.
Coverage of methods and markets
Treat coverage as its own KPI. Does the provider check every box on your must-have list of payment methods, currencies and regions? Missing one key option, such as Alipay in China or SEPA Direct Debit in Europe, can block growth. Score vendors by how complete their coverage is relative to your expansion plans.
Time to implement
Speed matters. A vendor quoting two weeks to launch is in a different category than one quoting three months. Ask for averages, not ranges and note how much internal resourcing they expect from you too.
Future readiness
Consider how fast the provider improves: how often they release new features, how quickly they adopt new payment methods and whether they publish a roadmap. This qualitative factor is your hedge against your business outgrowing them.
How do you identify warning signs in vendor proposals?
RFPs bring out every vendor's best sales pitch, which makes it even more important to look for what's missing. Certain patterns in proposals can be early warnings that a provider will be difficult to work with or can't deliver what they claim. These warning signs usually show up as omissions, vagueness or misdirection. A proposal that's precise and transparent signals that this might be a partner that will be accountable later.
Here's what to monitor for.
Ignored instructions
If you provided a template for pricing or requested a specific format and the vendor sends back a glossy PDF instead, that's a signal. If they can't follow directions at this stage, you shouldn't expect rigor once they're handling your business's money.
Vague or evasive answers
Watch out for answers that lean on adjectives but skip the numbers. "Industry-leading uptime" without actual percentages or "best-in-class fraud prevention" without benchmarks means they either don't have the data or don't want to share it. Push for specifics and take hedging as a warning sign.
Lack of references
Every strong vendor should be able to connect you with their current customers. If they dodge the request or only offer generic case studies, ask why. If a provider is unwilling to connect you with a satisfied client, there's probably a reason for it.
Overpromising or unrealistic pricing
Be sceptical of proposals that look significantly cheaper or claim flawless metrics, such as zero fraud, 100% uptime or massive discounts without explanation. Anything that seems too good to be true usually is, and hidden costs or limitations often surface later.
Misalignment with your needs
Sometimes what providers focus on can be a warning sign. If your RFP emphasises e-commerce and the response spends pages on point-of-sale (POS) hardware, that's a provider that doesn't understand or doesn't prioritise your business model.
Weak implementation or support plans
Pay attention to how they describe onboarding and support. If you see vague phrases, such as "our team will assist as needed", assume that means minimal help. A reliable partner outlines timelines, resources and points of contact up front.
How Stripe Payments can help
Stripe Payments provides a unified, global payments solution that helps any business – from scaling start-ups to global enterprises – accept payments online, in person and around the world.
Stripe Payments can help you:
- Optimise your checkout experience: Create a frictionless customer experience and save thousands of engineering hours with prebuilt payment UIs, access to 125+ payment methods and Link – a wallet built by Stripe.
- Expand to new markets faster: Reach customers worldwide and reduce the complexity and cost of multi-currency management with cross-border payment options, available in 195 countries across 135+ currencies.
- Unify payments in person and online: Build a unified commerce experience across online and in-person channels to personalise interactions, reward loyalty and grow revenue.
- Improve payments performance: Increase revenue with a range of customisable, easy-to-configure payment tools, including no-code fraud protection and advanced capabilities to improve authorisation rates.
- Move faster with a flexible, reliable platform for growth: Build on a platform designed to scale with you, with 99.999% uptime and industry-leading reliability.
Learn more about how Stripe Payments can power your online and in-person payments, or get started today.