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Payment Systems
Every payment transaction completes in seconds, yet dozens of controls run behind the scenes. This post covers the precautions for authorization and clearing, the critical role of reversals, and the financial loss scenarios most often seen in the field.
Payment Systems
TCR stands for Transaction Record Component, the packets that carry transaction information in a clearing system. Transaction types in a clearing file are distinguished by transaction code and usage code values, and this data is sent inside TCR packets.
Credit Card
From the invite-only American Express Centurion Card to the diamond-studded Dubai First Royal MasterCard, discover the world's most exclusive credit cards.
E-commerce
AI agents are moving beyond answering questions to searching, deciding, and paying on behalf of users. This post explains Agentic Commerce and what it means for payment systems, digital wallets, e-money institutions, banks, and fintechs.
General
Who will win in Agentic Commerce? Owning the customer used to be a huge advantage. Once an agent starts deciding on the customer's behalf, where does the real power move to?
Closed-Loop Payments
Is Alipay a payment system, or a digital economy? In the previous post we discussed how Starbucks shows that payment systems can evolve into a different structure. At first the goal was to make payment easier for the customer. As the system grew, loyalty programs...
Merchant & POS
In EMV-based debit card transactions, PIN verification is decisive for both security and liability. What happens when a card that only supports online PIN is sent to the issuer without a PIN, and the issuer approves it? Who owns the risk?
FAST
In the FAST system, an end-to-end money transfer between participants is targeted to complete in 2–3 seconds on average. Transactions that are not completed within 25 seconds are automatically cancelled.