Articles

Nine serious options, what each one costs, and the specific reason you would pick it over Stripe.

Payment intents, hosted card fields, and where each piece of the flow has to run.

What they are, why payments need them, and what to do when your processor does not have them.

Three rules, two of which almost every first implementation gets wrong.

There is an exact crossover point, and most people have never worked it out.

The most widely copied price in software, and nobody set it by calculation.

The 1958 experiment that went badly wrong, got unsolicited card mailings banned, and became Visa.

Rewards are paid for out of interchange — which means out of the merchant.

The questions people actually ask, answered directly.

Every fee, what triggers it, and worked examples at three volumes.

A payments API for software businesses, with published rates instead of negotiated ones.

Every major processor's published rate in one table, with the effective rate at three ticket sizes.

Interchange, assessments and markup — what each one costs, and who actually keeps it.

Exporting saved cards, rebuilding subscriptions, and running both processors side by side until the cutover is boring.

For a subscription business the card rate is only half the bill. Here are the three ways out, and what each one costs at $50k MRR.

The lowest headline rate is not always the lowest bill. Here is what each alternative charges at real ticket sizes and volumes.

The sandbox proves the happy path. Here is how to make it show you the others, and what you have to fake yourself.

Six objects, thirty-odd statuses, and the handful that look final and are not.

A decline returns 201, the card cannot be reused, and a failed subscription waits for you. What to do about each.

Your handler will be called twice, late, out of order, and sometimes not at all. Here is how to make each of those harmless.

A payout is a sum. Here is how to rebuild it from the transactions underneath, to a fraction of a cent.

Scope is decided by what touches a card number, and one line of code can change it.

The billing loop is the easy half. Timing, state and failed payments are the other half.

How a card on file actually works, and the one step that turns a token into a reusable one.

The single biggest reason accepting cards costs more in the US than in the EU.

A law written to stop billing errors became the merchant's single largest operational risk.

Card testing costs you fees, wrecks your approval rate, and most merchants never notice it starting.

The vaguest error message in payments exists because a specific one would help the wrong people.

The pump has to authorize before it knows what you will buy. That gap is where the hold comes from.

The money was never sitting anywhere waiting to come back.

For decades the signature was the security check. Then all four networks dropped it at once.

The first digit tells you the industry. The first six tell you the bank.

The last digit of your card is not part of the account number. It is a checksum.

The most retold origin story in payments was described as embellished by the family of the man it is about.

Where an API-first processor fits an online store — and where it does not.

Recurring billing in the same API as processing, at no extra percentage.

Why recurring revenue is the case where the rate difference compounds hardest.

Published rates, product surface, and where Braintree is genuinely the better choice.

Published rates, product surface, and where PayPal is genuinely the better choice.

Published rates, product surface, and where Adyen is genuinely the better choice.

Published rates, product surface, and where Stripe is genuinely the better choice.

Published rates, product surface, and where Square is genuinely the better choice.

Published rates, product surface, and where Shopify Payments is genuinely the better choice.

Every serious option, and the cases where each one beats us.

A straight answer, including the cases where it is not.

From integration to payout, in the order you actually encounter it.

What sits on our side of the line, and what stays on yours.

The resources, the auth model, and what the MCP server exposes.

Send more information with a B2B transaction and pay materially less interchange.

Routing across several processors — and why most businesses should not.

Who legally sells to your customer — and who owes the tax.

The four digits that classify your business — and quietly set your interchange rate.

The retry-and-remind process that recovers failed subscription payments.

The service that fixes expired cards before they ever fail.

The customers you lose without anyone deciding to leave.

The text on your customer's statement — and the cheapest chargeback prevention there is.

Bank-to-bank transfers at a fraction of card cost — with real trade-offs.

Money your processor holds back — why it happens and how to get it released.

The transfer that finally puts card revenue in your bank account.

The step between a successful payment and money you can actually spend.

Two separate steps that most integrations combine — and when you should not.

The European rule that changed checkout — and what it means if you sell into the EU or UK.

Replacing a card number with a reference — the single most useful idea in payments security.

The authentication step that shifts fraud liability — and costs you conversion.

The warning shot before a chargeback — and your best chance to stop one.

A forced reversal by the customer's bank — and why it costs far more than the sale.

The card data security standard — and how to make almost all of it not apply to you.

The qualified/mid/non-qualified model, and the reason it persists.

The transparent pricing model — and the volume at which it starts to win.

One number for every card — what that simplicity costs, and when it is worth paying.

The model that turned merchant onboarding from weeks into minutes.

The bank on your side of the transaction — and what it is actually liable for.

Visa, Mastercard, Amex and Discover — what they actually do, and what they charge for it.

The account your card revenue lands in before it reaches your bank — and why you probably already have one.

The largest fee in every card payment, and the one nobody can discount.

The part that captures card details at checkout — and why it is not the same as a processor.

The difference between a processor, a gateway, an acquirer and a merchant account.

The one number that compares cleanly between processors.

Six changes that actually move the number, in the order worth trying them.