This paper classifies 175 countries over a period of just 30 years according to the balance of payments stages that are frequently used in proposing a hypothesis that the stage depends on the progression in a nation's development. Using a nonparametric estimation, this investigation demonstrates that a nation's stage in the balance of payments has a non-monotonic relationship with its economic development and that a country at the stage of immature creditor-lender enjoys a higher GDP per capita than at any other stage in its development. Another notable finding is that a lending country produces about twice the GDP per capita that a borrowing one does and that about 25% of countries in the world lend money to the rest of the world in nearly every year.