Part V: Alternative Payment Methods (APMs)

Fragmentation starts here.

Audience: Operators

Cards dominate the West, but globally, the payment landscape is wildly fragmented. This Part (Chapters 18–23) maps the major alternative rails and explains when and why each one wins. We start with the rails themselves — bank transfers and real-time payments (Ch 18) — then climb the stack: the QR and proxy interface layer that sits on top (Ch 19), the pull-based world of direct debit and mandates (Ch 20), the telco rail that needs no bank at all (Ch 21), wallets and super apps that wrap rails in an ecosystem (Ch 22), and finally BNPL — credit wearing a payment method's clothes (Ch 23).