Why your PSP integration takes eight weeks, not eight minutes

Every payment gateway sold to brokers promises the same thing: connect to hundreds of providers instantly. It is the single most common claim in this category, and it is the one that most reliably tells an experienced operator that the vendor has never actually onboarded a merchant account for a CFD broker.

Here is what happens instead.

Two things are being confused

There are two separate pieces of work between you and a live deposit, and vendors collapse them into one sentence.

The technical integration is genuinely fast. Connecting your platform to a gateway is a few days of work, and once it is done, adding another provider is a configuration change rather than a new development cycle. This is the part a gateway vendor controls, and it is the part that can honestly be described as quick.

The commercial onboarding is not fast, and no vendor controls it. Every payment service provider assesses your business independently before they will process a single transaction for you. That assessment is the eight weeks.

What the assessment involves

Forex sits under merchant category code 6211, which acquirers classify as high risk. You are in the same bucket as sectors with elevated chargeback rates and heavy regulatory scrutiny, and providers price and gate accordingly.

A typical underwriting file asks for:

• Certificate of incorporation, memorandum and articles
• Your regulatory licence, and the scope of what it permits
• Twelve months of processing history, if you have any
• Director identification and background checks
• Financial statements or projections
• Your website, terms, and refund and complaints policies
• Details of the flows you expect: volumes, average deposit, target countries

That file goes to a risk committee. They come back with questions. You answer. That cycle is where the weeks go.

The rolling reserve

If you are approved, expect a rolling reserve: the provider holds a percentage of your processing volume, commonly between five and ten percent, for a rolling period of around six months. It exists to cover chargebacks that arrive after the fact.

This has a cash flow consequence that surprises first-time operators. In your first six months you are running with a slice of your deposit volume held back. Model it before launch rather than discovering it in month two.

Where the time actually goes

For a broker with a licence and no processing history:

Stage	Realistic duration
Preparing the application file	1–2 weeks
Provider review and questions	2–5 weeks
Contracting and technical setup	1–2 weeks
Test transactions and go-live	Under 1 week

Four to eight weeks per provider, and some will decline you regardless.

How to actually compress it

You cannot shorten underwriting. You can stop wasting cycles on it.

Apply to fewer providers, chosen better. The instinct is to apply everywhere at once and hope something lands. In practice each application consumes your team's attention, and a decline from a provider that was never going to approve a broker with your licence teaches you nothing.

Get the file right first time. Most delay is not the risk committee deliberating. It is a document that was missing, unsigned, or out of date, and a week passing before anyone noticed.

Start before you strictly can. Providers will often begin a preliminary review while your licence is still pending. It does not get you approved sooner than the licence, but it means the two processes run in parallel rather than in sequence.

Sequence by region. Your first provider should cover your largest target market. Broader coverage can follow after you are live, because adding a connector later is configuration, not a project.

What to ask a gateway vendor

Ask which providers actually approve brokers with your licence, in your regions, at your volume. A vendor who has done this will answer with specifics and will tell you where you are likely to struggle.

A vendor who tells you it happens instantly is telling you something useful too — just not what they intended.