Views here are my own, not my employer's.
For the last six years I've worked inside this industry, building payment products used around the world. Every week someone sharp asks me a plain question: why a card got declined, where the fee actually goes, whether a stablecoin is real money. The answers are usually simple. What's missing is a simple place to find them.
I think the plumbing is the interesting part. Once you can see how $100 moves — who touches it, who takes a cut, who carries the risk — the headlines start to explain themselves. Drawing that picture, one chapter at a time, is what this site is for.
It's vendor-neutral on purpose. I don't sell processing, I don't rank providers, and nobody pays to appear here. Every figure is checked against a primary source, and the illustrative ones say so out loud. It's free because the understanding should be.
I write it in plain words, the way I'd talk at lunch. If a line reads like a press release, it's wrong, and it goes. Spot a number that looks off? Tell me, and I'll fix it.
— Prashant