Payment enablement gate · Preview-only
WinSpotSocial Payment Approval Checklist
A working checklist for counsel review and written payment-provider approval before any marketplace payment work begins.
Print date: August 9, 2026
This checklist does not grant approval or authorize a launch. WinSpotSocial remains a display-only marketplace preview: no checkout, spot reservations, seller payouts, or random selection are active.
Owner checklist
Complete and retain these business and operating decisions before asking counsel or a payment provider to assess the model.
- Confirm the legal entity, ownership, business bank account, domain email, launch states, and an accurate description of every proposed transaction mode.
- Document the proposed fee and fund flow, merchant-of-record role, seller responsibilities, refund and dispute process, and any chance-based component.
- Retain qualified U.S. counsel with marketplace/payment, consumer-protection, and gaming or sweepstakes experience for the planned model and jurisdictions.
- Send the factual provider inquiry and save the account-specific written risk or compliance response with the business records.
- Assign accountable owners for support, reconciliation, refunds and disputes, seller verification, fraud escalation, incident response, and compliance retention.
- Keep WinSpotSocial preview-only until written approvals define a permitted, limited sandbox pilot.
Document checklist
Prepare these materials so legal, compliance, and risk review is based on the actual planned product—not a generic ecommerce description.
- Legal entity, EIN, formation, beneficial-owner, authorized-signer, bank-verification, and business-contact materials.
- Plain-language product description, target launch states, minimum-age plan, allowed item categories, projected volume, and sample listing lifecycle.
- Fund-flow diagram covering buyer payment, platform fee, processing costs, settlement, cancellation, refund, chargeback, delivery dispute, and seller suspension.
- Counsel-reviewed eligibility framework, official rules where applicable, terms, seller terms, refund/dispute policy, privacy notices, prohibited-items policy, and marketing claims.
- Seller verification, listing review, moderation, fraud, support, data-retention, and incident-response operating plans.
- Technical architecture documenting authorization, inventory controls, order and ledger records, audit logging, signed provider events, idempotency, reconciliation, and access controls.
Provider questions
Obtain written, account-specific answers from the actual provider or marketplace platform. Documentation, a sales conversation, or a test API response is not approval.
- Is the proposed marketplace or any spot-based/chance-related model prohibited, restricted, or eligible in the intended U.S. launch states?
- Which transaction modes, item categories, marketing claims, entry arrangements, and jurisdictions are permitted, prohibited, or subject to pre-approval?
- Can the provider support server-created marketplace checkout tied to an immutable order or reservation record, seller, listing, amount, currency, and fee snapshot?
- Which approved marketplace charge model applies, and who is the merchant of record?
- Can WinSpotSocial retain an application fee while the approved seller receives the balance? How are processing fees, refunds, disputes, chargebacks, reversals, negative balances, and reserves handled?
- May settlement be delayed under the approved model? Who controls funds and what public terminology is permitted without making escrow or custody claims?
- Does the provider offer hosted seller onboarding and verification for identity, tax, bank, sanctions, and payout eligibility in the planned jurisdictions?
- Which signed webhook events, retry guarantees, idempotency rules, reconciliation reports, and test-mode simulations are available?
- What underwriting, licenses, official rules, counsel opinion, monitoring, insurance, reserves, or reporting are required before sandbox and production use?
- Can the provider approve a sandbox or pilot first with live charges, seller payouts, and chance-based selection disabled? Who owns the approval path and escalation?
Hard no-go conditions
Stop the proposed integration, sandbox, marketing claim, or release if any of these conditions is true.
- Counsel has not provided written product and jurisdiction guidance, or the proposed model is unlawful, unlicensed, or prohibited in a target jurisdiction.
- The provider has not given account-specific written approval for the reviewed model, fund flow, seller onboarding, fees, and pilot scope.
- Business entity, ownership, bank, tax, authorized operator, or underwriting information is incomplete or inconsistent.
- Merchant-of-record, refund/dispute, settlement, reserve, tax-reporting, KYC/KYB, sanctions, and support responsibilities are not assigned and documented.
- The selected provider requires unapproved fund custody, off-platform transfers, manual workarounds, or misleading escrow claims.
- Required policy drafts, operational controls, authorization, ledger, audit, event-signature, idempotency, reconciliation, and incident-response controls are missing or untested.
- Any test or live flow would accept card information, create live charges, release seller funds, or run random selection before required approvals.
- A page, listing, CTA, email, social post, or support response weakens or contradicts the preview-only disclosure.