Finance review draft

Payment, invoice, deposit, wallet, and release gates before real customer funds are collected.

This SOP keeps payment instructions and release decisions under finance approval. It does not include bank details, payment links, account numbers, or provider secrets.

Launch payment stack

Use human-reviewed invoices first; add checkout automation only after policy and reconciliation rules are tested.

Stage one

  • PayPal Business for smaller overseas seller payments and deposits
  • Wise Business, Airwallex, or bank settlement for multi-currency and larger transfers
  • Finance-approved invoice/deposit wording stored outside AI auto-replies

Stage two

  • Stripe or PayPal checkout after refund, dispute, tax, chargeback, duplicate-payment, and reconciliation rules are approved
  • Payment webhooks only after dry-run tests for partial, duplicate, fee, refund, chargeback, and currency-difference states

Never automatic

  • Exact bank, PayPal, Wise, Airwallex, Stripe, card, refund, or compensation wording from AI replies
  • Paid status, wallet credit, procurement, release, shipment, or tracking sync from uploaded receipt alone

Payment evidence flow

Customer evidence starts review; it is not settlement.

Required sequence

  • Quote approved by owner/staff
  • Invoice/deposit request created from approved quote
  • Finance approves exact payment instruction or external payment link
  • Customer submits payment evidence through portal or finance confirms provider settlement
  • Finance verifies funds and only then updates paid/wallet/release state

Blocked until verified

  • Supplier purchase, sample order, packaging purchase, carrier/postage purchase
  • Inventory release, outbound shipment, Shopify tracking sync, wallet credit, invoice paid status, or procurement commitment
  • Refund, chargeback, partial payment, overpayment, or dispute statements to customer

Publish gate

These are required before collection of real customer funds at scale.

Provider

Payment provider account approved, settlement currency selected, finance owner assigned, and approved wording stored in a secure finance location.

System

Payment gate dry-run passes: no paid status, wallet credit, release, shipment, procurement, or tracking sync from evidence alone.

Evidence

Record sanitized launch evidence for payments_business_account; no account numbers, links, receipts, or private settlement records in reports.