All briefings
Articles — Page 10
143 briefings on payments, fintech, and AI money infrastructure.
Stablecoin On/Off-Ramp Operations: Where the Cost Advantage Gets Eaten
On-chain settlement is cheap. The fiat on-ramp and off-ramp are where real cost lives. Provider landscape, corridor math, and round-trip economics vs SWIFT.
April 16, 2026
First-Party Fraud: Friendly Fraud and the Largest Chargeback Category
First-party fraud now dominates dispute volume at most e-commerce merchants. Why it's growing, who commits it, and the playbook for evidence-based defence.
April 15, 2026
What an Auth Rate Point Is Worth: Authorisation Optimisation Economics
One auth rate point is a revenue number, not an engineering metric. How to calculate what it's worth, what drives declines, and which interventions move it.
April 14, 2026
Embedded Finance and Payments: What Operators Actually Need to Build
Embedded finance is a $7 trillion opportunity in the US alone by 2026. But the infrastructure requirements — BIN sponsorship, ledger architecture, KYB.
April 14, 2026
InstaPay and PESONet: The Philippines' Dual Real-Time Rail Architecture
The BSP runs two rails: InstaPay for real-time low-value transfers, PESONet for batch high-value clearing. What it means for EMI vs bank-partner operators.
April 14, 2026
3DS2 and the Authentication Tax: What Operators Are Actually Paying
3-D Secure 2 reduces fraud but adds checkout friction that taxes authorization and conversion — how operators measure and manage the authentication cost.
April 12, 2026
Card Scheme Fees Demystified: What's Inside the MDR
MDR = interchange + scheme fees + acquirer margin. Scheme fees alone hold 30+ line items, up 20–30% since 2019. What operators can actually do about it.
April 12, 2026
Stablecoin Treasury Operations: Custody, Keys, and Multisig
Stablecoin treasury requires decisions traditional treasury doesn't: custody model, key architecture, hot/cold tiering, insurance, and segregation of duties.
April 12, 2026
Why CoDi Failed and Pix Didn't: Lessons for New Rail Launches
Both launched as central-bank-mandated real-time payment systems. Pix hit 160M users in 18 months. CoDi is effectively dead. The delta isn't luck —.
April 10, 2026
Braintree vs Stripe: An Operator's Decision Framework
Not a feature comparison — a decision framework based on operator archetype. Marketplaces, SaaS platforms, enterprise global expanders, and high-volume.
April 9, 2026