A 12-week structured learning plan for understanding payment facilitator platforms, designed for senior software engineers building fintech applications.
This guide covers the complete knowledge base needed to build and operate a payment facilitator (PayFac) platform. The learning is organized into six two-week modules, each building upon the previous.
| Week | Module | Focus Area |
|---|---|---|
| 1-2 | Payment Ecosystem Foundation | Core entities, money flow, industry players |
| 3-4 | Merchant Onboarding & Underwriting | KYC/KYB, risk assessment, compliance collection |
| 5-6 | Risk & Compliance | Chargebacks, fraud, PCI-DSS, AML/BSA |
| 7-8 | Transaction Processing | Authorization, settlement, message formats |
| 9-10 | Platform Architecture | Data modeling, audit trails, event systems |
| 11-12 | Regulatory & Partnerships | Sponsor banks, card network registration, MTLs |
Each module contains:
- README.md - Overview and learning objectives
- topics.md - Detailed topics to research
- questions.md - Key questions to be able to answer after completing the module
- resources.md - Suggested reading and research sources
- Read each module's README to understand the scope
- Work through the topics systematically
- Research each topic using official documentation and industry resources
- Validate understanding by answering the module's key questions
- Build mental models by mapping concepts to real-world payment flows
- Understanding of distributed systems architecture
- Familiarity with API design and integration patterns
- Basic knowledge of financial terminology
- Glossary - 100+ payment industry terms and definitions
This guide focuses on what to learn rather than teaching the content directly. The goal is to provide a clear research roadmap for self-directed learning.
Contributions are welcome! See CONTRIBUTING.md for guidelines.
This work is licensed under CC BY 4.0. You are free to share and adapt this material with attribution.