The Anatomy of the Swipe: Making Money Move

by Ahmed Siddiqui

11 Jun 2021 ★★★★★

Why I read it: I already have several years of experience working as a software engineer in digital payments. Want to start adding theoretical background to the understanding I’ve gained via my work.

What I liked about it: It was easy and quite fun to read. It has all these comics to illustrate the concepts. At first I was a bit put off by that but started to like them eventually.

It was really focused on the payments flow and the movement of money – exactly what I was looking for.

It is structured to really help you remember things (via sections as key takeaways and coming up next). That causes some repetition, but for me this was the exactly right amount of repetition. I noticed I find it easier to reason about the payment flow now. + the key takeaways section will make it easy to get back to the book to double check something.

The examples mentioned were well known payments providers like Stripe, Adyen, Square.

What I disliked: The book focuses on American market and regulations. I am still curious how the money flow looks in Europe.