A working model · two seconds, at real speed
Followthe money
You tap, you swipe, or you insert the card.This is everything that happens next, 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 · That night, and the next day
No money moved when you paid.
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 keeps that promise overnight — press play and watch eighteen hours in ten seconds.
5:03 PM
04 · When it goes wrong
The charge you didn't make.
Disputes are the part of payments people feel the most and understand the least. So this act is a case, not a diagram: a $120 charge you never made, and the argument that follows it back down the wire. You will make the calls.
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.
Further reading: The Anatomy of the Swipe, Ahmed Siddiqui — the book that maps this territory in full.