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Fee Check

Payment industry articles and analysis

Guides explain how something works and are written to stay true. An article is dated writing: it says what it said on the day it was published, and carries the day it was last reviewed as well.

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What is here, and how to read it

  • An article is dated; a guide is written to stay true

    The two collections are not divided by length or by depth. A guide answers how something works — a pricing model, a dispute, a terminal rollout — and is written to be correct on the day you open it, whichever day that turns out to be. An article is a piece of writing with a day attached to it: it describes how things stood when it was written, and it stays attached to that day. Both are worth reading, but only one of them should be read with a glance at the date first. If what you need is the mechanism, start in Guides. If what you need is what moved, and roughly when it moved, start here.

  • Two dates on every article, answering two different questions

    A card in the grids above carries the review date; the article itself carries both, on a line under the headline. They are not the same claim. The published date says when the piece was written, and that is the date that governs whether its picture of the market is still the current one. The reviewed date says when the page was last checked, which is a fact about the page rather than about its subject. So on a topic that moves — a network rule, a compliance deadline, an authentication requirement — a recent review date means someone has looked at the page since, not that the underlying requirement has stopped changing.

  • The shelves sort by the question you arrived with

    Nothing here is filed by recency, because almost nobody arrives wanting the newest thing. Payments 101 is where to go when the vocabulary is the obstacle — declines, settlement, the difference between a gateway and a processor. Security and fraud covers authentication, chargebacks, and the things that go wrong on purpose. Operations and finance is the back office: deposits, reconciliation, and invoices that get paid on time. Growth and commerce is the front of the business — checkout, online ordering, and the reasons a sale does not complete. Industry trends is the shelf that ages fastest, and is meant to. Company news is the RapidCents shelf — releases, integrations and awards — alongside a couple of much older posts that report what other card companies were doing at the time.

  • Some of this is written for one market and stays there

    An article about a rule that applies in one country cannot be made correct for another by swapping the words inside it, so a piece like that is absent from the other market rather than rewritten for it. What that means while you are reading: the shelves above, and the count beside each one, are the ones for the market this site serves you, and a piece someone sends you a link to may live on the other one. Every article also opens with a scope note naming who it was written for and what it covers, which is the quickest way to tell whether it is about your situation before you spend the reading time on it.

Where to start

  • Net vs Gross Deposits: Why Your Bank Deposit Doesn't Match Your Sales

    Start here if the deposit never matches the day’s sales. It separates the two settlement models — fees taken out of every payout, or billed once a month — and ends with a way to tell which one you are on today: compare one day’s batch total against the deposit that followed it.

  • Credit Card Declines: Common Reasons and Types

    The one to read when payments are failing and nobody can say why. It sorts declines into the temporary kind that is worth retrying and the permanent kind that will fail every time until something is fixed, then explains what the code attached to each is telling you.

  • 3D Secure: The Smart Way to Prevent Chargebacks and Fraud

    Read this if disputes are the problem rather than outright fraud. It covers what the authentication step does at checkout, what the liability shift changes about who carries a disputed transaction, and what the newer version does to keep that step out of a customer’s way.

  • The Future of Checkout: 7 Emerging Trends

    A survey piece rather than a how-to, and most useful as a planning agenda: seven things changing about the checkout itself, each with the merchant-side consequence attached. Look at the date before you act on it — this is exactly the kind of piece that ages.

  • Do Credit and Debit Cards Still Dominate Online Payments?

    Start here if you are being pushed to add payment methods. It answers the headline question directly and names the sources it answers from, then turns to the less exciting conclusion: that the return is usually in tokenization, authentication and decline handling on the cards you already take.

Questions about this collection

Are these the articles from the RapidCents blog?

Yes. The RapidCents blog was folded into these shelves rather than kept as a separate feed, so a post you remember from it is filed here by subject instead of by date. The archive came across whole rather than trimmed, which is why the oldest pieces here date from 2020 and sit alongside recent ones, and why each still carries the publication date it originally had.

Who writes these articles, and is anyone named as a reviewer?

Every article names its author on the page, just above the dates. Where a piece was reviewed by a named function rather than only edited — legal and compliance on a piece about rules, for instance — that reviewer is named next to the author. Where no reviewer is named, none was recorded, and the piece should be read as editorial background.

An article describes a rule that has changed since. What should I do?

Check the current version with the body that sets the rule, and then with your processor, before you act on it. An article keeps its original publication date rather than being quietly restated, so what you are reading is a record of a moment. The mechanism it explains usually survives the change; the deadline, the threshold or the specific requirement is the part that moves. If the subject is one you have to comply with rather than merely understand, the Guides collection is written to be the reference and is the better place to return to.

Is any of this legal, tax or compliance advice?

No. These articles are background, written to help you ask sharper questions of your processor, your accountant or your own counsel; they are not advice on your circumstances. Nothing here substitutes for a professional who has actually seen your file.

An article and my processor say different things. Which one governs?

Your merchant agreement governs, together with the card network rules sitting behind it. An article describes how something generally works across the market; your contract describes what your provider actually does, including the places where it departs from the general case. When the two disagree, the disagreement is the useful finding — it is worth asking your provider to point at the clause.

Industry trends

Market shifts and acceptance behaviour.

Operations & finance

Deposits and reconciliation.

Payments 101

How card acceptance, declines and processing actually work.

Security & fraud

3-D Secure, chargebacks and fraud prevention.

Growth & commerce

E-commerce, online ordering and revenue growth.

Company news

RapidCents announcements, awards and product releases.