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How we verify payment rails — and what we refuse to claim

Last reviewed:
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By:BrokerAnalysis Research Desk
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Fact-checked by:BrokerAnalysis Editorial Team

How does BrokerAnalysis verify deposit and withdrawal information?

Every payment-rail fact we publish carries one of three grades. 'Verified' means we read it in the rail operator's or the regulator's own document and recorded the date. 'Reported' means independent third parties agree but we could not reach the primary source. 'Not established' means we looked and could not confirm it — and we print that instead of guessing. We hold no funded accounts at the brokers we list, so we publish no timed deposit or withdrawal claims of our own.

The three grades

Most comparison sites present every payment fact with the same flat confidence, whether it came from a regulator's circular or from another comparison site. We grade each fact instead, and the grade is rendered next to it on the page. A fact with no grade cannot reach a page through this system.

Verified

Read in the operator's or regulator's own published document — a tariff schedule, a circular, a gazette, a licence register — with the URL and the date we read it recorded alongside the fact.

ExampleM-Pesa's KES 250,000 per-transaction ceiling, taken from Safaricom's own consumer tariffs and limits page.

Reported

Independent third-party sources agree on the fact, but the primary document was paywalled, offline or unreachable when we checked. We say so on the page and name what would upgrade it.

ExampleKenya's 1:400 retail leverage cap for CMA-licensed brokers: consistently reported, but the CMA register did not respond when we tried to confirm it first-hand.

Not established

We looked for the fact and could not establish it to either standard. It still appears on the page, marked, because a reader deciding where to send money is better served by a known gap than by a confident guess.

ExamplePer-broker withdrawal processing times on any rail. We do not hold funded accounts, so we have no basis for a number.

What we check, in order

  1. The rail operator's own tariff and limit schedule. Ceilings and fees come from Safaricom, bKash, NPCI, G-Xchange or the equivalent — never from a broker's marketing page, which has an interest in the answer.
  2. The conversion step. Which currency the account is denominated in, how many conversions a round trip involves, and who sets the rate. This is the cost competitors omit, so we treat it as the headline rather than a footnote.
  3. The regulator's position. Whether a foreign broker may lawfully solicit residents at all, under which instrument, and what the retail leverage cap is. Read from the regulator's own document where we can reach it.
  4. Exchange control. The ceiling on moving money abroad to fund an account, which in several markets binds long before any broker limit does.
  5. The failure modes. What actually goes wrong — name mismatches, expired payment references, ceilings that bounce a payout — and the specific thing to do instead.

Claims we will not make

This list is as much a part of the method as the grades. Each of these is standard in our niche, and each one is either unmeasurable from outside or actively misleading.

The claimWhy we do not make it
“We timed a real withdrawal: 14 minutes.”This requires a funded, KYC-verified account at each broker in each country. We hold none. A number like this without a stated method is unfalsifiable, and it is the single most copied unsourced claim in this niche.
“Fastest withdrawals in Kenya.”A superlative built on data nobody published. Rail-side delivery is near-instant almost everywhere; the variable is the broker's internal approval queue, which is not observable from outside.
“No fees on M-Pesa deposits.”Technically true of the rail tariff and materially false overall, because it omits the currency conversion charged on the way in and again on the way out. We price the conversion instead.
“Regulated and safe.”Regulated by whom, under which entity, for which product. We name the legal entity and the licence category, because brand names and licensed entity names routinely differ — which is exactly how an unlicensed entity passes for a licensed one.

Where this method is applied

We hold graded rail records for 9 rails across 7 countries. Each one renders on its rail page and on the matching country hub.

Frequently asked

Because we do not hold funded accounts at those brokers, so we have no measurement to report. Rail-side delivery is near-instant on most mobile-money and instant-EFT rails; what varies is the broker's internal approval queue, which cannot be observed from outside. We mark it 'not established' rather than repeating a number from another site that also did not measure it.

We read it in the rail operator's or the regulator's own published document — such as Safaricom's tariff schedule, SEC Nigeria's exposure draft, or a South African Reserve Bank exchange control circular — and we record the URL and the date we read it next to the fact on the page.

Because it is almost always the larger cost and it is charged twice. A local-rail deposit is converted into the trading account's base currency on the way in and back again on the way out. The rail tariff is usually a few units of local currency; the two conversion spreads are a percentage of the whole balance, and almost no broker publishes the rate it applies.

We print both figures and say which one we think is current and why. For example, many guides still quote M-Pesa's older KES 150,000 per-transaction ceiling; Safaricom's own tariff page now shows KES 250,000, so we publish the operator's figure and note the discrepancy rather than silently picking one.

Each rail record carries its own last-verified date, shown on every page that renders it. Regulatory items are rechecked when a consultation closes or a decree commences; operator tariffs are rechecked on review. If a date looks stale to you, treat the fact as stale — that is what the date is for.

For how we score and rank the brokers themselves, see our broker ranking methodology. To compare the rails against each other, see the payment rail comparison.

Sources & References

  1. — safaricom.co.ke
  2. — safaricom.co.ke
  3. — cma.or.ke
  4. — licensees.cma.or.ke
  5. — sec.gov.ng
  6. — sec.gov.ng
  7. — vietnamnews.vn
  8. — resbank.co.za
  9. — resbank.co.za