All Guides
Every page on the site, grouped. If something is going wrong right now, the front page routes by symptom instead.
The seven sections
| Section | What is in it |
|---|---|
| Accepting payments | How money moves, processor choice, fees, approval rates |
| Chargebacks and disputes | Reason codes, deadlines, fighting them, preventing them |
| Fraud prevention | Detection, tools, what to buy and when not to buy |
| Rules and compliance | Network rules, PCI, consumer protection law |
| Day-to-day operations | Reconciliation, payouts, holds, running a risk team |
| Step-by-step playbooks | For the day it is already going wrong |
| Reference tables | Codes, thresholds, deadlines, definitions |
Look something up
| Table | Use it for |
|---|---|
| Chargeback reason codes | The code on a dispute notice, and what evidence beats it |
| Decline codes | Why a payment failed at checkout, and whether to retry |
| Benchmarks | Whether your approval, fraud and chargeback numbers are normal |
| Response deadlines | How many days you get, by network and stage |
| Business category codes (MCC) | Your merchant category code, and why it affects your rates |
| Glossary | Plain-English definitions for every term used here |
Start where you are
Not a course, just the order these topics make sense in for the job you actually do.
Running a small business. Choosing a processor then preventing chargebacks then reducing them fast when the ratio moves.
Running an online store. Checkout conversion then getting more payments approved then 3D Secure once fraud starts costing more than the friction.
Working in fraud or risk. Fraud types then risk scoring then velocity rules then fraud metrics to know if any of it worked.
Running payment operations. Settlement and reconciliation then processor management then chargeback metrics.
Buying a tool. Chargeback vendors, fraud vendors, and how to evaluate one without being sold to.
Prefer to learn it in order?
The Guide is 15 short lessons, about 105 minutes, in sequence. Start at pathway 1 if you only do one, because processor choice and fees drive everything else.