Affiliate Disclosure

How LumScope Makes Money

Last Updated: January 1, 2026

The Simple Version

LumScope is reader-supported. When you sign up for a payment provider through our links, we may earn a commission—at no extra cost to you.

✓ You pay the same price whether you use our link or go direct to the provider.
✓ We earn a commission from the provider (typically 10-30% of first-year fees or a flat referral fee).
✓ Our recommendations remain independent and based on evidence, not commission rates.

— How Affiliate Marketing Works —

1. You Click a Link

When you click a link to a payment provider in our guides (e.g., “Sign up for Adyen →”), a tracking cookie is placed in your browser. This cookie tells the provider that you came from LumScope.

2. You Sign Up

If you create an account and start processing payments, the provider pays us a commission. This comes from their marketing budget, not from your fees.

3. We Keep Researching

This commission helps us fund our research, pay our analysts, and keep LumScope free for readers. We don’t run ads or paywalls.

What This Means for You

✓ What We DO

Recommend providers based on evidence and suitability for your use case.
Disclose all affiliate relationships transparently.
Analyze providers with no affiliate relationships if they’re the best fit.
Update our guides when providers change pricing or features.

✗ What We DON’T DO

Recommend providers based on commission rates.
Suppress negative findings in exchange for affiliate partnerships.
Accept payment to alter our Resilience Audit scores.
Hide the fact that we earn commissions.

— Providers We Have Affiliate Relationships With —

As of January 2025, we have affiliate partnerships with the following payment providers:

Stripe (Marketplace Engines, Standard Processing)
Adyen (Enterprise Processing, Interchange++)
Paddle (Merchant of Record)
Mangopay (European Marketplaces)
PayPal (Marketplace Engines)

This list is updated quarterly. If a provider is not listed here, we either don’t have an affiliate relationship or the partnership is pending.

Providers We Recommend Without Affiliate Relationships

We regularly recommend payment providers with whom we have no affiliate relationship. This proves that our analysis is independent:

Rapyd (Global Fintech-as-a-Service)
Checkout.com (Enterprise Processing)
Braintree (PayPal-owned Gateway)
Various High-Risk Gateways (Authorize.net, NMI, PaymentCloud)

FTC Compliance

This disclosure complies with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

We are required by law to disclose material connections between us and the providers we recommend. This page serves as that disclosure.