A practical, plain-English education in how modern payments actually work — published as a free essay series on Substack. Read in order below, or jump to whatever you need.

📬 Read & subscribe on Substack: rickygraz.substack.com

The Series (in reading order)

1. v1 — Introduction
2. v2 — Key Entities
3. v3 — How Money Moves
4. v4 — Intro to Cards
5. v5 — Intro to Tokenization
6. v6 — Token Lifecycle Management
7. v7 — Account Updaters
8. v8 — Card on File & Stored Credentials
9. v9 — Push Provisioning & Embedded Issuing
10. v10 — Card Fulfillment
11. v11 — Transaction Processing
12. v12 — Network & Processor Connections
13. v13 — Identity (KYC/KYB)
14. v14 — Disputes & Chargebacks
15. v15 — Regulators & The Shared Responsibility Model
16. v16 — The Core Regulations: Reg E, Reg Z, Reg II, UDAAP
17. v17 — Reporting