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Understanding Payments: A Whistle-Stop Tour into What You Thought You Knew
This is the book for professionals in the payments industry. Written in an engaging and accessible style, it enables new and experienced payments practitioners alike to understand the fundamentals of the various payment ecosystems, and to quickly get up to speed on developments in the industry.
From cards to bank and alternative payments, the jargon is debunked and myths are busted. For each ecosystem, a simple framework is mechanics, economics, risks, and future outlook, enabling comparison and the evaluation of the best applications in different scenarios. The book also provides an overview of the global regulatory landscape. Drawing on real examples throughout, it weaves together the underpinning ecosystem principles, legislation, and key stakeholders. It offers readers practical advice regarding, and insights into, the key disciplines and equips them with an understanding of the key issues and opportunities. Also including an extensive and comprehensive glossary of terms – the first of its kind in the payments industry – this book will be used as an essential reference for years to come.
Understanding Payments will enable payments practitioners, private sector corporations, and regulators to keep up with a fast-evolving and extremely competitive industry. It can be used across businesses to help train staff and as part of continuing professional development, and will be useful to those involved in mergers and acquisitions, investors wanting to understand the industry, professional services firms, law firms and consultants, and policy makers.
From cards to bank and alternative payments, the jargon is debunked and myths are busted. For each ecosystem, a simple framework is mechanics, economics, risks, and future outlook, enabling comparison and the evaluation of the best applications in different scenarios. The book also provides an overview of the global regulatory landscape. Drawing on real examples throughout, it weaves together the underpinning ecosystem principles, legislation, and key stakeholders. It offers readers practical advice regarding, and insights into, the key disciplines and equips them with an understanding of the key issues and opportunities. Also including an extensive and comprehensive glossary of terms – the first of its kind in the payments industry – this book will be used as an essential reference for years to come.
Understanding Payments will enable payments practitioners, private sector corporations, and regulators to keep up with a fast-evolving and extremely competitive industry. It can be used across businesses to help train staff and as part of continuing professional development, and will be useful to those involved in mergers and acquisitions, investors wanting to understand the industry, professional services firms, law firms and consultants, and policy makers.
- GenresBanking
Kindle Edition
Published February 29, 2024
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
April 5, 2026
This book has a lot of pros, that make it probably the best book on payments in general. But it's far from perfect. If you treat it as a glossary of payment-related concepts, it's near perfect - everything important is here, the structure of chapters is well thought through, all actors (in main payment processes) are also covered, but ...
... there's very little "WHY" in all of that, the context is lacking. Various models are listed (e.g., payfac), but the practical reasons of distinguishing them are sometimes unclear. The book itself is not really technical, but I believe that some essential tech details should be covered (but are not) - e.g. basics of card capture.
In the end, I expected more - I already knew the lingo, I understood the key roles (like acquirer or issuer), but I still find it rather unclear why the ecosystem has evolved the way it did and why certain companies tend to pick scenario X over Y.
For the sake of completeness, this book also covers additional chapters on crypto. stable-coins and other non-fiat options, but these are very high level, so one has to buy an additional book to read more details ("Beyond ...").
In the end, it's not a bad book, but keeping in mind its high retail price, I don't think it's 100% worth the money ...
... there's very little "WHY" in all of that, the context is lacking. Various models are listed (e.g., payfac), but the practical reasons of distinguishing them are sometimes unclear. The book itself is not really technical, but I believe that some essential tech details should be covered (but are not) - e.g. basics of card capture.
In the end, I expected more - I already knew the lingo, I understood the key roles (like acquirer or issuer), but I still find it rather unclear why the ecosystem has evolved the way it did and why certain companies tend to pick scenario X over Y.
For the sake of completeness, this book also covers additional chapters on crypto. stable-coins and other non-fiat options, but these are very high level, so one has to buy an additional book to read more details ("Beyond ...").
In the end, it's not a bad book, but keeping in mind its high retail price, I don't think it's 100% worth the money ...
Displaying 1 of 1 review