A working model · two seconds, at real speed
The anatomyof a payment
You tap. It beeps. This is everythingthat happens in between — live.
First, choose this tap's fate
Then tap the card
02 · The economics
The tap is free. The system is not.
The merchant receives slightly less than you paid, and the difference is divided among everyone who carried the question: the issuer's share is called interchange, the network takes its fee, the acquirer keeps a margin. Drag the amount and watch the split — this small arithmetic is the business model of every card on earth.
- Interchange · to the issuer
- $1.70
- Network fee · to the scheme
- $0.15
- Acquirer margin
- $0.45
- The merchant keeps
- $97.70
03 · The epilogue
No money moved today.
Here is the part almost nobody knows: at the moment of approval, not one naira or cent has moved. The approval was a promise, the issuer saying I am good for this, hold my word.
The money moves later, quietly and in bulk. Tonight the terminal batches the day's promises and submits them; the networks total up what every bank owes every other bank and settle the difference. A day or two after your two seconds, the money arrives where you thought you had already sent it.
I have spent ten years building the systems in this story, on the issuing side and the acquiring side, in Lagos and Toronto. The two seconds are my day job.
If you want the longer version, the work is here.