The Hold That Is Not Money Yet - authorisation, capture, clearing, settlement and chargebacks

Stripe’s payment as a state machine, with authorise and capture split into two steps. This lesson walks one card payment through those states from the cardholder’s side, and adds the two that happen after the money has moved: the refund and the chargeback.

Before you start. From Four Parties to Every Tap - issuer, acquirer, network and interchange: a card payment runs from the merchant to the acquirer, across a network, to the issuer, which approves it in about a second. From A Book You Never Erase - the append-only ledger, reversals and derived balances: a ledger never edits a posted entry; a correction is a new entry. And from Charged Twice (idempotency & exactly-once): a retried request must not charge twice, which an idempotency key prevents. That last idea is linked here, not retold.