The Payments Engineer Playbook Is Going Paid in 2025—Here's What You Need to Know
Level up your expertise in payments systems and support the ongoing publication of this newsletter.
In January 2025, The Payments Engineer Playbook will become a paid publication. Support The Playbook for $15 per month or $149 per year by pledging a subscription before the year ends.
The world does not need another passionate developer.
Every year, the software engineer industry grows by 10 to 25 percent1. That means that there could be twice as many people building software for a living as there were 4 years ago. The world is drowning in undifferentiated software engineers.
What the world needs, and is willing to pay a premium for, is deep expertise.
Expertise is the only way you can stand out meaningfully from your competition. Not curiosity, not passion, not the breadth of the tools you’ve used.
That’s because your expertise is what reduces the alternatives to hiring you.
When tech companies have few alternatives to your expertise, you can earn more from your services, you can set the terms, and you can make sure that your ideas and advice have a profound impact.
But when there are many alternatives, it is them who dictate how much you earn, on what terms, and how much impact you’re allowed to have.
Tech companies thrive when they make software that gives consistently good results. Therefore, they reward engineers that make consistently good decisions.
The purpose of The Payments Engineer Playbook is this: to help you become a smarter, more skillful and more successful payments engineer. So that your decisions are good, consistently.
And in order to support that purpose, from the first day of January 2025, The Playbook will become a paid publication.
Deep dives on the stack behind the miracle of online payments
Purchasing things on the Internet is nothing short of a miracle. You’re probably too young to remember, but in the 1990s, most people thought that online payments were impossible. “Hackers” were the implied reason.
Great engineers making consistently good decisions made online payments possible.
The Payments Engineer Playbook is unique in one aspect: it is not for generalists. The Playbook is not concerned with the way software is written for health care startups, streaming platforms, or search engines. Engineers working in those industries have different needs, and different contexts, than engineers writing money software.
The Playbook is the world’s only publication dedicated exclusively to payments engineers.
My name is Alvaro Duran, and I’m the author of The Payments Engineer Playbook. I’ve built and maintained software that moves money around for pretty much my entire career. I’ve seen what works at MegaCorp, and at tinyco. Each week, I pick one topic that’s relevant for payments engineers, and I dive into it.
You will not find infotainment or simplistic diagrams in The Playbook, however captivating they are to watch. That is the cognitive style of PowerPoint. Like Edward Tufte, I believe that charts and bullet points are an ineffective way to describe technology, especially when the goal is to build deep expertise.
Many publications use an easily shareable but shallow form of communication. The Playbook isn’t one of them.
As a reader of The Payments Engineer Playbook, you are treated as if you were a professional athlete. Demanding the most effective solution to your most acute problems.
This is, after all, a playbook.
What Makes You Valuable
I’m checking The Playbook’s home page.
I see software engineering concepts explained in the context of payments. Every aspect of building money software is covered. I see articles on accounting for engineers, on how to avoid double charges, and on how to roll new features faster and with less problems.
The Playbook is also the single best source of guidance on how to oversee engineers at payments startups.
How to distinguish what’s audacious from what’s plain bullshit. Why you should always have control over your customers’ data. And how to navigate the tension between large-scale systems and accurate accounting.
These are the running themes of The Payments Engineer Playbook. It is one of the most carefully read newsletters in the world.
You should read what makes you a more valuable payments engineer.
Knowledge Makes The Difference
The Playbook is for payments engineers who see themselves as such, and not as generalists.
If you think that a few tantalizing gifs will put you ahead, The Playbook is not for you.
If you think that passing the job interview is more important than doing a good job, The Playbook is not for you.
And if you think that you can build payment systems with generic software advice, void of specific business context, The Playbook is not for you.
But if you want to
Gain deep expertise in payments technology
Make the most of the tools you can use to build money software
Learn about the startups that are shaping the future of payments
Then The Payments Engineer Playbook is for you.
On the 1st of January, 2025, The Playbook will become a paid publication. You’ve already done the hardest part: finding the newsletter. Now put what I said to the test by pledging a subscription for 4 weeks for $15. Less than the cost of a chatGPT subscription, and far more valuable.
Or you can go ahead and take advantage of yearly subscription for $149. That’s over $30 off the monthly price.
By the way, most companies have a training budget for their employees.
The Payments Engineer Playbook is very likely eligible.
Talk to your manager about it.
But make sure you do it fast. After New Year, subscribing to The Playbook will become more expensive. You have until then to make up your mind.
Paid subscribers will receive weekly articles of The Playbook every Wednesday in their inbox. Free subscribers will receive at most one article every month, 4 times less than those supporting this publication.
That’s the kind of knowledge gap that makes the difference.
If you want to keep receiving The Playbook every week in 2025, pledge your support now, before it gets more expensive. There will be no immediate charge, and you’ll receive an email on New Year confirming that you are a paid subscriber.
Click on the button below, and choose the option that suits you best.
And here’s The Playbook’s guarantee: should the articles no longer live up to your expectations, you can cancel your subscription at any point. No questions asked. You will get refunded for the undelivered share of your subscription, and I will genuinely wish you the best.
Payments Systems Fail Because They’re Built By Generalists
Tech founders are slowly catching up to the fact that their startups would be more valuable and more defensible if they offered some product or service that helped their clients grow.
Better payment systems are their secret weapon.
Airlines have frequent flier programs. Amazon, Netflix and Starbucks have their own gift cards. And car manufacturers earn more from financing your new car than from the car itself.
Every successful business, as it scales, develops a deeper relationship with money.
Payments systems become more crucial the more successful a company is. It is high time payments engineers have a publication that’s solely for them.
It would be silly to promise you success and riches just by pleading your support to the newsletter. But I can promise you this: The Playbook will always be insightful. It will always be actionable.
And it will always be valuable.
“Python’s Programmers’ Experience”, entropicthoughts.com