Payments Culture

Payments Culture newsletter is a Substack written by Matt Jones, with occasional co-author Arlen Agiliga, treating payments as a mix of money, politics and consumer behaviour rather than a stream of product announcements.

Recent essays The archive shows a post every few weeks. On 7 October it asked how the affordability crisis feeds the securitisation of everything bought on credit. A 28 July piece looked at fintech and the Iran war, one on 8 July asked why brands love the FIFA World Cup, and on 13 June the question was whether consumers really want agentic commerce. Earlier items covered why merchants in New Zealand will be surcharged (20 May), whether American Express can do what Visa and Mastercard cannot (12 May) and an interview on Polygon and agentic commerce (16 April).

Why payments people read it The posts are opinionated explainers, useful for strategy conversations: surcharging rules, closed-loop versus open networks, stablecoin infrastructure and resilience. Merchants and PSP product managers can borrow its framing. Posts are in English and open for comments.