The Margin Wars Briefing
A private monthly briefing for about 150 people who own a payment cost, approval, loss or FX number. Each issue is one tactic. It is free, and you join by invitation.
Request an invitationWho it is for
- Heads of payments, and payments product and pricing leads at acquirers and PSPs
- Merchant payments and finance leads at enterprise and cross-border merchants
- Risk, disputes and treasury leads
Vendors' sales teams, investors without an operating role, and press are not invited.
What every issue contains
- The move, and its mechanics step by step
- Prerequisites
- The metric that proves it worked, and an impact range that is sourced or labelled as an assumption
- Failure modes and the rollback
- Who owns it
- How it differs in the US, UK/EU, Africa and APAC
- What we would do on Monday
Each issue is one tactic.
What you will not get
News commentary, trend pieces, hot takes, sponsors or anything based on employer or client data.
Excerpt: Tactic card 01
Price the agent channel before it prices you
The move. Put every agent-originated order into its own channel: the fee paid to the agent, interchange, scheme and acquirer costs, refunds, claw-backs and disputes in one cost-per-order line, measured against a holdout of direct orders, so the cost of the channel is measured, not assumed.
Before you start. Decide who is merchant of record for each flow, and check the principal-versus-agent accounting with finance. Flag agent-initiated transactions at the checkout, and set a separate dispute reason for "agent bought the wrong thing".
Cross-continent campaign column. In the US, card rails and marketplace-facilitator tax rules set the first terms. In the UK and EU, SCA and consumer-rights rules decide who carries the refund. In APAC, local wallets and schemes decide whether the agent can pay at all. In Africa, mobile money and FX access decide whether the order settles.
The full card, with metrics, failure modes, owners and Monday actions, goes to readers. Excerpts are published about once a quarter.