No, we will not ask you to pay until the search(es) have been conducted and the documents, if found, are ready for you to download them. The ordering process will not even ask you for any payment info. So, unlike most record retrieval services, we don’t have your money while you wait for the order to be processed.
Yes, we are taking the risk that after we do the work you could abandon the order and we won’t get paid for our effort. But we’re all adults here and the research community is a small one. Our trust is very rarely proven to be misplaced.