Contents
All 54 chapters of How Money Moves, in 5 parts. 452,932 words.
Every chapter
- 1The Oldest QuestionYou will be able to explain why a payment is an edit to a record rather than the movement of an object, using Ada's notebook as the worked example.37 min
- 2A Balance Is Not a ThingYou will be able to explain why the number in your banking app is a promise rather than a location, and why the envelope-in-a-drawer picture of a bank is…33 min
- 3Double EntryYou will be able to state the rule of double entry in one sentence — never write down one end of a journey — and explain why a record-keeping method that…36 min
- 4Ledgers, Journals and AccountsYou will be able to explain why a bank's general ledger contains no account with your name on it, and where your own balance actually lives.36 min
- 5What a Bank IsYou will be able to explain why your bank balance is a debt the bank owes you rather than a pile of notes held somewhere with your name on it.36 min
- 6Two Kinds of MoneyYou will be able to explain why a payment between two customers of the same bank needs no cooperation from anybody, while an identical-looking payment to…32 min
- 7Clearing Versus SettlementYou will be able to say precisely what clearing is, what settlement is, and why "the payment went through" carries almost no information.34 min
- 8NettingYou will be able to explain how about £23 billion of daily Bacs payments is discharged by moving about £5.3 billion between settlement accounts, with…38 min
- 9Currency, Decimals and the Money TypeYou will be able to explain why ten 10p coins added together as pounds come to 0.9999999999999999, and why a till written to notice exactly £1.00 will…37 min
- 10Reading a StatementYou will be able to read a bank statement line by line and say, for each line, which system wrote it, when, on whose authority, and what could still…38 min
- 11What Is Physically on a CardYou will be able to name the six physical forms in which one card carries one piece of information, say which three are obsolete, and explain why all six…37 min
- 12The NumberYou will be able to verify a card number by hand, on paper, in about ninety seconds, and to build the check digit rather than merely test it.37 min
- 13The Four Things Called the Security CodeYou will be able to name the four values that a card carries under the heading "security code" — CVV1, CVV2, iCVV and dCVV — and say which of the four…36 min
- 14The Chip Is a ComputerYou will be able to state precisely what separates a chip from a magnetic stripe: a stripe is a recording and a chip is a correspondent, so a stripe…40 min
- 15The CryptogramYou will be able to explain why a criminal holding a perfect byte-for-byte record of everything a card said last Tuesday cannot use that record to buy…36 min
- 16Online and OfflineYou will be able to answer the question the previous chapter skipped — whether anybody actually phones the bank — and say what happens on the occasions…40 min
- 17Proving It Is YouYou will be able to explain why the Application Cryptogram is a proof and the three bytes of tag 9F34 are only a claim, and why that difference is where…37 min
- 18ContactlessYou will be able to explain where a card with no battery gets its power, and why the honest description is mutual inductance in the near field rather…36 min
- 19The Token in Your PhoneYou will be able to explain why the last four digits printed on a phone receipt differ from the last four on your plastic, and prove it to yourself by…35 min
- 20The TerminalYou will be able to explain why a card machine wipes its own keys the instant its case is opened, and why the result is a device that will never take…36 min
- 21Point-to-Point EncryptionYou will be able to explain why a shop can take card payments for a decade and never once hold a readable card number, and why that is a design decision…37 min
- 22What the Terminal Actually SendsYou will be able to take any piece of a payment message and say which of the four writers — the card, the terminal, the acquirer or the issuer — put it…36 min
- 23The Four-Party ModelYou will be able to name the five roles in a card payment and say which of them holds a contract with which others, and which pairs have no contract at…36 min
- 24ISO 8583You will be able to explain what the bitmap does, and read the shape of a transaction off eight bytes of hexadecimal before parsing a single value.37 min
- 25The BitmapYou will be able to read a sixteen-character hexadecimal string such as F23C448128E09200 and say, without a tool, which data elements the message carries.37 min
- 26The Fields That MatterYou will be able to say, for each of the fifteen fields that carry a card authorisation, what it holds, who writes it and what specifically breaks when…37 min
- 27A Transaction, NarratedYou will be able to narrate a contactless card authorisation from card presentation to receipt, naming every hop and what each party does in it.37 min
- 28The Number You Were GivenYou will be able to name the four identifiers a card payment leaves behind, say who created each one, where it appears and how long it lives.34 min
- 29Response CodesYou will be able to point to the two-character field that carries the entire verdict of a card authorisation, name it as DE39, and say why a database…38 min
- 30Authorisation, Clearing, SettlementYou will be able to explain why a customer's available balance falls in under two seconds while not one unit of currency has moved anywhere.36 min
- 31Where the Money GoesYou will be able to say who pays interchange and who receives it, and explain why the merchant is neither of those parties despite being the one out of…36 min
- 32ISO 20022You will be able to explain why ISO 20022 is not a format but a method for producing formats, a dictionary of business concepts and a committee structure…36 min
- 33The Physical NetworkYou will be able to name the five roles a card authorisation passes through, and say which two of them are scheme members and therefore the only parties…38 min
- 34Batch Against Real TimeYou will be able to explain why a £2,400 salary lands on Thursday while a £248,000 house completion lands before lunch, without reaching for "one system…36 min
- 35Bacs and the Three-Day CycleYou will be able to say what happens on each of the three Bacs days, and name the 22:30 deadline that decides which cycle a file belongs to.37 min
- 36The MandateYou will be able to say what a Direct Debit Instruction legally is, and why it is an authority given to the service user rather than a contract with the…36 min
- 37Faster PaymentsYou will be able to explain why a payment that reaches the plumber's account in one second does not move a penny between the two banks until Monday.33 min
- 38CHAPS and RTGSYou will be able to explain why a conveyancer waits for CHAPS rather than sending a Faster Payment, even though Faster Payments is quicker and free.35 min
- 39Addressing: Sort Codes, IBANs and Confirmation of PayeeYou will be able to explain why a payment to a valid account in somebody else's name arrives without a single system in the chain failing.37 min
- 40SEPAYou will be able to explain why there is no SEPA computer and no SEPA clearing house, and say what Europe built instead.36 min
- 41SWIFT and Correspondent BankingYou will be able to explain why SWIFT has never moved a penny, and say precisely what it does move instead.36 min
- 42UPIYou will be able to explain why NPCI never holds a rupee of Meera's forty and yet determines where every one of them goes.34 min
- 43Instant Rails ElsewhereYou will be able to explain why Brazil, the United States and the euro area reached three different outcomes from the same forty-year-old technology.36 min
- 44Open BankingYou will be able to explain why open banking is not a payment system, and name the rail that actually carried the £340.39 min
- 45Where Cards Are StolenYou will be able to name the five places card details are actually taken — the stripe, the shim, the radio, the breach and the guess — and say which of…36 min
- 46Card Not PresentYou will be able to explain why a chip transaction cannot be replayed while an online one is nothing but replayable facts, and why that single difference…37 min
- 47Three-D Secure and Strong Customer AuthenticationYou will be able to name the three domains, the component that sits in each — 3DS Server, Directory Server, Access Control Server — and say which one…38 min
- 48PCI DSS and Its RelativesYou will be able to say who writes PCI DSS, who enforces it and why the Council that owns the standard cannot fine anybody for breaking it.38 min
- 49ChargebacksYou will be able to explain why the money leaves a merchant's account before anybody has decided who was right, and why that ordering is deliberate…38 min
- 50ReconciliationYou will be able to explain why three records of the same week disagree, and why forcing them to agree is not the job.36 min
- 51Fraud DetectionYou will be able to explain why a fraud system makes two kinds of mistake and why only one of them ever generates an incident report.37 min
- 52Anti-Money-LaunderingYou will be able to explain why what gets a criminal caught is almost never the money itself but the story attached to it.37 min
- 53RegulationYou will be able to explain why a firm holding £900,000 of other people's money on an ordinary Tuesday is required to have only 125,000 euros of its own…38 min
- 54What Breaks and What It CostsYou will be able to explain why a forty-minute terminal outage produces three weeks of consequences, and why the two numbers are not related to each other.37 min