I’m surprised a network so sensitive to latency (as are payment networks), was able to achieve their latency SLAs with micro services.
Maybe Amex being a closed-loop network helps with latency?
Yes, this is a huge deal. VisaNet and friends have to wait on the actual bank cores in order to perform online authorization. Amex can guarantee end to end latency.
Apple Pay is extremely fast from my experience (at least the web version). There is a high percentage of market loss if payments take long or fail. Im sure there must be a graph for where it plateaus with diminishing returns when it comes to speed but faster payments definitely help with sales.
I’ve heard anecdotally that it’s < 140 ms for payment networks.
Anyone, please correct me if you know better.
In practice, the POS sends a message to the acquirer processor -> hits the network -> is sent to the issuer processor, and back again.
https://medium.com/wharton-fintech/the-anatomy-of-the-swipe-...
Since the advent of e-commerce, POS-networking and fraud detection systems in 1990's-2000's.
User-facing and authorisation path are highly latency sensitive. It includes tap-to-pay, online checkout, issuer authorisation, fraud decisioning, and instant payment confirmation – even moreso for EFT payments.
> […] 2-5 seconds more from card presentation to getting approval back.
This is the mid-1990's level QoS when smaller merchants connected the acquirer bank via a modem connection, and larger ones via ISDN.
Today, payments are nearly instant in most cases, with longer than one-second card payment flows falling into the exceptions territory or inadequate condition of the payment infrastructure.
I had no idea that was a thing
Hmmm.
Oh Jesus Christ.
Quite apart from fraud/abuse prevention, I expect part of this is stuff like juggling all the different rewards and points systems plus handling time-based offers ("spend $x at y retailer by z date, get $10 cash back" type thing) plus ensuring that all those things are correctly unwound in the case of refunds being issued.
As someone who recently got an Amex card (primarily for Air Canada lounge access), I've been impressed at how nice their app is compared to the five previous Canadian bank apps I've been exposed to in recent years (Scotia, BMO, RBC, Tangerine, CIBC). Some nice things I noticed in the Amex CA app that I haven't previously experienced:
- instant alerts on use, even when it was a non mobile pay transaction
- up to the minute transaction history in-app, including Aeroplan point accrual; all my other credit cards have a delay before new items appear.
- an in-app button to debit my bank for the balance without me having to go to my bank's app to send a bill pay.
It's atrocious how bad most bank and card apps are. I'm planning a switch to a new bank, and mobile app quality is a huge criterion. Bank of America and Wells Fargo get zero points from me.