#0: 👋 Hello, World! Welcome to Decoding Modern Payments
I've been building payment platforms for almost 5 years now, and my Notion is now filled with half-explained concepts, journal entries of war stories, and diagrams that still make me scratch my head and go "wait, why the hell does it work like that!?".
If you’re involved in the payments space e.g. as a product person, engineer, or founder, you probably have a similar collection of notes.
The world of payments is a labyrinth. It’s full of jargon, modern tech bolted onto incredibly legacy tech, and expensive lessons you often learn the hard way. Instead of letting my notes collect virtual dust, I'm using them to build Decoding Modern Payments (DMP). Here, we will:
- Explain how payments work in a way that actually makes sense (I promise minimal jargon!)
- Share real stories from building and scaling payment systems from millions to tens of millions to billions of dollars (including the failures)
- Explore how AI is already changing the game, from fraud detection to LLM-powered dispute bots, and what’s coming next
We will particularly focus on the intersection of payments and AI: How will intelligent agents transact? How can we make payment operations 10x efficient? What do underwriting/risk/fraud models look like in a post-LLM world? Every week, there’s a new ‘ChatGPT-for-payments’ pitch, but what I want to do is build a map of where AI truly adds leverage (and where it’s hype). This publication is my public forum to explore these questions, and I’m excited to engage with you and learn alongside you.
Ultimately, this is my journey of learning in public. I don't have all the answers, but I've got a front-row seat, plenty of questions, and a few expensive scars worth the price of admission into this world, which I’ll share with you.
Coming Next Week
Next Thursday, I'll tell you the story of the $20M payment failure which taught me that oftentimes the biggest problem in payments isn’t technical - it’s the fact that almost nobody understands how it all fits together. It involves C-suite escalations, whiteboards covered in arrows, and a caffeine-fueled war-room sprint to get money flowing again.
Subscribe to get that story delivered straight to your inbox. Let’s explore the complex chaotic world of payments together!