Archive - The Payments Engineer Playbook

The Playbook's 2025 Beach Reads

I love reading on the beach.

Aug 13 •

Testable Payment Webhooks

PSPs are prioritizing their engineers' experience above anyone else's

Aug 6 •

July 2025

Pull Requests Are Herbie

Why waiting for the damned PR is the main productivity hit for software teams

Jul 30 •

Code-First Reliability: 4 Unconventional Approaches to Always-on Payments

Today is the launch of my newest book, titled Code-First Reliability.

Jul 25 •

Database Migration Wartime Stories

And some PostgreSQL not-so-well-known lock workarounds

Jul 23 •

The Joy of Being On Call For Payment Systems

How to be at ease when every second counts

Jul 16 •

The Ultimate Guide to Payment Tokens

Tokens are the Beautiful Chaos of Payments: lots of innovation happening under the hood, and more of that keeps coming.

Jul 9 •

Why Payments Are Path-Dependent

A winning strategy to go around DNHs and improve payments authorization

Jul 2 •

June 2025

Code-First Reliability in Payment Systems

Building Payments to fail as soon as possible

Jun 25 •

Why Payments Aren't Money Movements

Payments are contracts, and require an ecosystem of tools on top of transfers

Jun 18 •

Ouch! What To Do When A Payment Fails

Categorizing errors, and learning to live with the disappointing Do Not Honor

Jun 11 •

Stripe Deploys 1,000 Times A Day And You Don't Deploy On Fridays

If you don't know, the thing to do is not to get scared, but to learn

Jun 4 •

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