Category Archives: Payments
Amex Places a Big Bet on Agentic Commerce With Agent Purchase Protection
American Express launched the ACE Developer Kit for AI agent payments. The bigger move is Amex Agent Purchase Protection: if a registered agent gets a purchase wrong, Amex covers it.
You Paid $100. The Merchant Kept $96.80. Here Is Who Took the Rest
Most people think Visa or Mastercard takes the swipe fee. On a $100 online purchase, the card issuer takes $2.20 of the $3.20. Here is the split, and where merchants can push.
The Fastest-Growing Fraud in 2026 Passes Every Check You Have
Adyen’s 2026 Fraud Report says the fastest-growing fraud comes from verified accounts and recognized devices. The defense is now the cost: half of merchants report rising false declines.
Four Agentic Commerce Frameworks Compared: Visa TAP, Google UCP and AP2, OpenAI ACP, Mastercard Agent Pay
Four companies are building the rails for AI agents to buy things. Read side by side, the frameworks are not really competing. Each answers a different question.
The 16-Digit Card Number Now Has an Expiration Date: 2030
Mastercard has committed to 100% e-commerce tokenization in Europe by 2030 and is phasing out manual card entry. Visa is heading the same way. This is an authorization story more than a UX story.
False Declines Just Became More Dangerous Than Fraud
When a human gets declined at checkout, they retry. When an AI agent gets declined, it silently moves on. Agentic commerce makes approval precision as important as fraud prevention.
Network Tokenization vs PCI Tokenization: What’s the Difference?
Network tokenization vs PCI tokenization: what each protects, how they differ on auth rates, card lifecycle management, PCI scope, and processor portability — and why serious merchants implement both.
Payment Facilitator (PayFac) vs ISO: What’s the Difference?
PayFac vs ISO: a complete guide to the two main payment acceptance models — what each one is, how they differ on liability, onboarding, revenue, and compliance, and how to choose the right one for your platform.
Subscription Payment Retry Logic and Dunning Management: A Payments PM’s Guide
What Is Subscription Payment Retry Logic? Subscription payment retry logic is the system that determines what happens when a recurring charge fails — which decline codes get retried, how quickly, how many times, and with what modifications. Done well, it recovers a significant percentage of initially failed recurring payments. Done poorly, it wastes money, generates…
Payments Product Manager Interview Questions: What to Expect and How to Answer
Preparing for a payments product manager interview? Below are the questions that come up most often when fintechs, payment processors and enterprise merchants hire a payments product manager, and what a strong answer covers for each. Who This Payments Product Manager Guide Is For This guide is written for two audiences: payments product managers preparing…