Reports
Deep, structured research you can download and reuse — the numbers behind our blog posts, expanded into practitioner reports.
Payments Ecosystem Map
A plain-English reference to every role in the card-payment chain, licensed and not, and how money and data move between them. The series entry point.
- Scheme, issuer, acquirer, processor, gateway, wallet roles
- Data flows for authorization, clearing, and settlement
- Key vendors and infrastructure providers by segment
- PDF download, ~2,800 words
Card Unit Economics Guide
A practitioner's breakdown of how a card program actually makes money: interchange, scheme fees, acquirer margins, rewards costs, and the breakeven model.
- Revenue and cost drivers for issuer, acquirer, and network
- How interchange and FX fees flow through the four-party model
- Reward/cashback economics and CAC payback dynamics
- Line-by-line P&L framework with illustrative figures
Build a Card Program Playbook
The launch checklist for fintech teams building a crypto-linked or fiat card program: sponsor banks, BINs, processors, KYC, and go-live sequencing.
- Sponsor bank vs direct scheme membership vs BIN sponsor
- Processor / program-manager selection criteria
- KYC/KYB, AML, PCI DSS and scheme compliance roadmap
- 90-day launch timeline with common pitfalls
Licensing, Sponsorship & Compliance Guide
A jurisdiction-by-jurisdiction primer on card-program licensing: e-money, banking, scheme membership, and the compliance stack you cannot skip.
- Singapore, Hong Kong, UK, EU, and US regulatory paths
- EMI vs bank license vs scheme sponsorship trade-offs
- AML, sanctions screening, and transaction monitoring basics
- Checklist for legal and compliance readiness
How this works
These reports are delivered as PDFs. The buttons above link straight to a checkout page run by Waffo, the company that handles payments for this site. After you pay, Waffo emails you a receipt with a View order link; the file sits on that order page, so you can download it again later from the same place. The price shown includes VAT.
Want a report on something not covered here? Email chenshiwei509@gmail.com and say what you were trying to work out. What gets asked for repeatedly is what gets written next.