TOPIC #247Advanced 10 min read

Design a Payment Processing System (Stripe / PayPal)

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Key takeawayCore Architecture Summary

Guarantee zero money loss: Idempotency keys, Double-entry bookkeeping ledger (immutability), Reconciliation pipelines, and PCI-DSS vault tokenization.

Key Glossary Concepts in this TopicAll Glossary Terms

01.Functional & Non-Functional Requirements

A Payment Processing Platform (Stripe, Adyen, PayPal) processes financial transactions, communicates with acquiring banks and card networks, manages merchant payouts, and guarantees zero monetary loss.

Functional Requirements

  1. Pay-in (Charge Processing): Accept credit card/bank payments from buyers and charge merchant accounts.
  2. Pay-out (Disbursements): Transfer accumulated merchant balances to external bank accounts.
  3. Card Tokenization (PCI Compliance): Tokenize sensitive Primary Account Numbers (PAN) into secure non-PCI tokens (tok_18a94b2).
  4. Double-Entry Bookkeeping Ledger: Maintain an immutable financial ledger where every credit has a balancing debit.
  5. Nightly Settlement Reconciliation: Reconcile internal ledger transactions against external bank clearing files.

Non-Functional Requirements

  • Zero Double-Charge Guarantee (Strict Idempotency): Duplicate requests must never result in duplicate credit card charges.
  • Data Integrity & Immutability: Financial ledger entries can never be modified or deleted.
  • High Availability & High Consistency: 99.999\% uptime with strong ACID guarantees on ledger commits.
  • PCI-DSS Level 1 Compliance: Sensitive cardholder data must be quarantined in an isolated, encrypted vault.

Stripe-Style Payment Gateway & Double-Entry Ledger Architecture 💳

PRO Architecture Blueprint

Stripe-Style Payment Gateway & Double-Entry Ledger Architecture 💳

PCI-isolated tokenization vault, idempotent payment state machines, immutable double-entry bookkeeping ledger, and nightly bank settlement reconciliation.

Stripe-Style Payment Gateway & Double-Entry Ledger Architecture 💳
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