Topic
How money moves for internet businesses: processors, fees, payouts, holds, and the rails behind every invoice and checkout.
Shopify's own example is a $100,000 advance at a 13% fixed fee. Repaid in 18 months that is about 18.3% a year; repaid in six it is about 65.4%. Our conversion table, the milestones that set the speed, and the ten states that must give you an APR.
Footnote 3 of the OCC's 21 July decision says the proposed Wise National Trust would not have been FDIC insured either. What safeguarding actually covers, the one setting that turns pass-through insurance on, and a twenty-minute audit of every balance you hold.
Both platforms now bill a percentage for processing outside their in-house rail. Published rates side by side, the formula the fee is charged on, worked arithmetic at $20,000 a month, and the exempt-provider list that makes BigCommerce behave differently.
Wero e-commerce went live in Germany in November 2025 and Lidl switched it on for its online shop on 24 July 2026. Stripe's own page says the method allows refunds for 730 days, no disputes, no manual capture and no subscriptions.
The Commission did not object to Google charging a steering fee. It objected to the level and the length, both of which are published on Google's own help pages. The three routes out of Play billing, priced, with the enrolment steps.
In March 2016 a British startup with a prepaid card and 3,000 testers raised a million pounds from the public in 96 seconds. The cap on each investment was the point.
Credit cards only, never debit, capped at your own processing rate and never above 4%, with 30 days' notice and three separate disclosures. The rules, the states with restrictions, and the arithmetic showing a compliant surcharge recovers about 94% of your fees.
The reporting threshold for payment apps and marketplaces returned to more than $20,000 and 200 transactions. Card payments still have no threshold, and the form reports gross, not profit.
Merchants of record charge 5% plus 50 cents; a DIY Stripe and Stripe Tax stack runs about 3.4%. The worked math on what that 1.6-point spread buys, and who should pay it.
The OCC just told Wise it cannot be a bank yet. A practical map of the three models that protect money held at fintechs, the conditions attached to each, and a 15 minute fix for your float.
A shared card number is an open-ended permission slip. Virtual cards - one per vendor, capped at the plan price - turn every subscription into a budget that enforces itself.
A card payment link is convenient at $300 and expensive at $5,000 - percentage fees don't care that your work scaled. The per-rail math, and when to offer a bank transfer instead.
BEC cost victims $2.77 billion across 21,442 complaints in 2024 - roughly $129,000 per incident. It isn't a hacking problem; it's a payables-process problem, and the fix costs almost nothing.
Roughly a quarter of subscription churn isn't customers leaving - it's their cards failing. Benchmark data, the compounding math, and a recovery stack in priority order.
US card disputes hit 158 million in 2025, and small merchants carry the loss. The card-network thresholds that actually matter, and a three-layer defense: prevent, deter, fight, plus when not to fight.
On a $1,000 invoice, the route your money takes can cost you $6 or $90. Published fees compared from the providers' own pricing pages, with a worked example and a decision rule.
New sellers regularly discover their revenue is real but their cash is not. What Stripe and Shopify actually say about holds and reserves, and a survival plan for your first year of processing.