cards
3 free lessons tagged cards across Business. Each one is a short sequence of focused steps with narration and a five-question quiz at the end — take them in any order, no signup required.
Interchange: The Fee Structure That Shapes the Industry
Every card fee argument eventually reaches interchange: the fee the merchant's side pays to the cardholder's bank on every transaction. This lesson decomposes the merchant discount rate, explains why rewards cards exist and who really funds them, covers the EU caps of 0.2 and 0.3 percent and their loopholes, and shows why the same purchase costs a merchant triple on a corporate card.
Authorization, Clearing, Settlement: The Three Clocks of a Payment
The tap is instant; the money is not. A card payment runs on three separate clocks: authorization in about a second, clearing in overnight batches, settlement as netted bank transfers. This lesson walks the message flow, explains holds and why they linger, shows why refunds are slow when charges are fast, and follows one transaction through all three phases.
The Four-Party Model: Who Actually Touches a Card Payment
A card payment is a trust machine between four parties who have mostly never met: cardholder, issuer, merchant, acquirer, with a network in the middle that routes messages and sets the rules. This lesson maps who does what, who carries which risk, what a PSP actually is, and the surprising answer to whose money pays the merchant on the day you tap.