Appendices

Reference-grade materials for practitioners.

The appendices are the lookup layer of the book. Use them when you need a definition, a diagram, a comparison, or a regulatory snapshot without re-reading an entire chapter. Every artifact carries a chapter pointer back to the full story.

Contents

Appendix A — Glossary. Plain-English definitions of every key term used in the book: Glossary

Appendix B — Payment Flow Diagrams. The full Mermaid diagram set — canonical flow, card lifecycle, 3DS, tokenization, chargebacks, dunning, virtual accounts, QR, direct debit, carrier billing, stablecoins, routing, and the agentic stack.

Appendix C — Comparison Matrices. Seven side-by-side scorecards: network vs gateway vs PSP vs orchestrator, message formats, token types, billing models, push vs pull, cross-rail comparison, and closed- vs open-loop agentic architecture.

Appendix D — Regulatory Cheat Sheets. Region-by-region snapshots (US, EU/UK, Singapore/APAC, global) of the regimes that shape payments — who each applies to and the one thing practitioners get wrong.

Appendix E — Failure Mode Catalogue. The debugging appendix: symptoms, causes, and where to look, organized by lifecycle stage from authorization to off-boarding.