Payments SME

Deep expertise: clearing, settlement, liquidity, risk, TARGET services, SEPA and cards, ending in synthesis.

Who this is for

A senior BA, product owner or operations lead who needs deep, reliable payments knowledge.

Experience level: Senior expert, 10 to 15+ years. Deep expertise for a senior BA, product owner or operations lead. Built to stay valuable at 15 years of experience.

What you will be able to do

• Reason about clearing, settlement, liquidity and risk at field level.
• Challenge a hub, gateway or scheme design on its real trade-offs.
• Advise on exceptions, claims and cross-border edge cases.

Prerequisites

The Business Analyst or Technical Business Analyst pathway.

Recommended sequence

Work through the chapters in this order. Within each chapter, complete the core lessons listed.

1. What money is (All lessons)
   What money is.
2. Accounts and balances (All lessons)
   Accounts and balances.
3. Ledger, posting and reconciliation (All lessons)
   Ledger, posting and reconciliation: booking entries per message, loro, mirror and shadow accounts.
4. Lifecycle timelines and failure modes (All lessons)
   Lifecycle timelines and failure modes.
5. Global instant systems (All lessons)
   Global instant systems: NPP, Pix, PayNow, PromptPay, SPEI, Buna, US RTP, SEPA Request to Pay.
6. Claims, enquiries and case management (All lessons)
   Claims, enquiries and case management.
7. Cross-border investigations (All lessons)
   Cross-border investigations.
8. Cash management (All lessons)
   Cash management: sweeping, pooling, zero balancing, cash forecasting.
9. Clearing Concepts and Netting (All lessons)
   Clearing concepts and netting.
10. Settlement Models (All lessons)
    Settlement models.
11. Liquidity Management (All lessons)
    Liquidity management.
12. Settlement Risk (All lessons)
    Settlement risk.
13. Settlement design and failure (All lessons)
    Settlement design and failure: cycle design, liquidity optimisation, gridlock resolution, intraday credit, collateral, default waterfall.
14. TARGET Services: T2, T2S and TIPS (All lessons)
    TARGET services: T2, T2S and TIPS.
15. Addressing Payments in T2 (All lessons)
    Addressing payments in T2.
16. TIPS in Depth: Instant Payments and Liquidity Transfers (All lessons)
    TIPS in depth: instant payments and liquidity transfers.
17. SEPA Credit Transfer Deep Dive (All lessons)
    SEPA Credit Transfer deep dive.
18. SEPA Direct Debit Deep Dive (All lessons)
    SEPA Direct Debit deep dive.
19. Card Payments Deep Dive (All lessons)
    Card payments deep dive, building on ch21 and ch31.
20. Cards compliance and acquiring (All lessons)
    Cards compliance and acquiring.
21. Payment engine internals and observability (All lessons)
    Payment engine internals and observability.
22. API design standards and integration patterns (All lessons)
    API design standards and integration patterns.
23. Reject and Return in CBPR+ (All lessons)
    Reject and return in CBPR+.
24. Payment Operations Architecture: State, Resilience and Control (All lessons)
    Payment operations architecture: state, resilience and control, building on ch40 and ch41.
25. GDPR, BSA/AML and operational resilience (All lessons)
    GDPR, BSA/AML and operational resilience.
26. Product strategy and business models (All lessons)
    Product strategy and business models.
27. Scheme onboarding, market expansion, build versus buy (All lessons)
    Scheme onboarding, market expansion, build versus buy.
28. BA practice depth (All lessons)
    BA practice depth.
29. Embedded finance and ISO 20022 data analytics (All lessons)
    Embedded finance and ISO 20022 data analytics.
30. Payments in 2025 and Beyond (All lessons)
    Payments in 2025 and beyond: synthesis, what comes next.
31. How 10 Large Banks Do Payments (All lessons)
    How 10 large banks do payments.

Simulators and labs

• T2/TIPS Simulator
• State Machine Simulator
• Accounting and Reconciliation Lab
• Exception Investigation Simulator
• Cross-Border Configurator

Assessments

• Clearing and Settlement Test
• Rails Test
• Cross-Border Test
• Operations Test

Capstone: Settlement model recommendation

Compare settlement models and recommend one for a bank.

Deliverable: A written settlement model comparison and recommendation for a bank: RTGS, deferred net settlement and prefunded models compared on liquidity, risk and cost, with a recommendation and the reasoning behind it.

Completion criteria

• Finish every core lesson in the sequence.
• Pass the Clearing, Rails, Cross-Border and Operations tests with 70% or more.
• Complete the required simulator exercises.
• Submit the settlement model recommendation.