Payments

The Invisible Invoice

Russell Sechzer on what's missing in agentic commerce: incomplete financial instructions, who authorizes agents, who pays for work that never becomes a purchase, and the invisible costs behind Muse, Instinct, Stripe, Visa, and AP2.

Essay · AI Agents · Finance · Payments · Startups

What do Visa and Mastercard do? An intro to card networks

A practitioner from the payments industry explains what card networks like Visa and Mastercard actually do—and what they do not do. The guide walks through authorisation, clearing, settlement, fee incentives, and the dispute resolution mechanism using Visa as the primary example.

Guide · Fintech · Payments · Economics · Finance

Test clocks: How we made it easier to test Stripe Billing integrationsOriginal article link with an AI-written directory summary

Ji Huang explains how simulated clocks make recurring billing behavior testable without waiting for real time to pass. The article examines time-related edge cases and the design of Stripe's billing test infrastructure.

Case study · Software Testing · Payments

Ledger: Stripe’s system for tracking and validating money movementOriginal article link with an AI-written directory summary

Ilya Ganelin describes Ledger, Stripe's internal record of financial movements. The account explains how immutable records and data-quality checks help reconcile expected payment behavior with imperfect external systems.

Case study · Payments · Data Engineering

Stripe’s payments APIs: The first 10 yearsOriginal article link with an AI-written directory summary

Michelle Bu traces the evolution of Stripe's payments APIs as they absorbed more payment methods and business requirements. The retrospective explores the tension between a simple first integration and the complexity of real payment workflows.

Case study · API Design · Payments