The journal.
A magazine about paying strangers online, in ten departments: field notes, fine print, money mechanics, scam anatomy, a lexicon, case files, long reads, studio notes, buyer’s craft and interface.
Screenshot fraud: why a picture of a transfer proves nothing
A screenshot of a transfer looks like proof, but it is only a picture. Anyone can edit one in minutes. Here is why images cannot confirm payments, what can, and how both buyers and sellers should handle "proof of payment."
Tender: what counts as payment, and who decides
"Legal tender" is one of the most misunderstood phrases in money. People assume it means every shop must accept cash. Usually it means something much narrower. Here is what tender really means, where the word comes from and who decides what counts as payment.
Case file: two people, one shared login, one disputed purchase
A hypothetical case. Two flatmates share a streaming and shopping account to save money. One day, an expensive purchase appears that neither admits to. We follow how the dispute unfolded and why shared logins make simple questions hard to answer.
From carbon copies to chips: how card payments were made safer, one fix at a time
Card security did not arrive in one invention. It grew in layers, each added after criminals found a way around the last: printed lists of bad numbers, magnetic stripes, phone authorizations, chips, one-time codes. Here is that history, one fix at a time.
How we name things: the words behind our statuses, buttons and errors
"Pending", "processing" and "completed" are the default words of payments software. We replaced almost all of them. Here is how we name order statuses, buttons and error pages, and why a status should tell you who is holding the next move.
Test the support desk before you trust the seller
The best time to find out how a seller handles problems is before you have one. A single, well-chosen question sent to support tells you more than any homepage. Here is what to ask and how to read the reply.
Pre-ticked boxes and the add-ons nobody chose
Travel insurance, a charity donation, a premium delivery upgrade, a newsletter: some checkouts add them for you, with a box already ticked. If you do not notice, you pay. Here is how pre-ticked boxes work, where the law limits them and how to catch them.