Product leadership in fintech and payments
I am Ricky Graziosi, I want to learn as much as possible about product, payments, building, investing, real estate, and health. I am currently working on building the future of payments, sharing information on fintech, and building a habitat for your life.
Current snapshot
A few things I am focused on right now.
Focus Areas
What I write and work on
My recent writing and operator experience center around fintech infrastructure and product execution.
Card Program Design
How prepaid and consumer debit programs are structured, launched, and scaled with sponsor-bank partners.
Sponsor-Bank Strategy
Tradeoffs across community banks, economics, and compliance posture for fintech products.
Payments Economics
Durbin and interchange dynamics translated into decisions for product and GTM teams.
Regulatory Operating Models
Where product design, risk, and compliance need to align for durable program growth.
Product Leadership
Iterating on onboarding and activation flows with measurable experiments instead of guesswork.
Practical Education
Writing clear, tactical explainers to help operators make better payments decisions faster.
Payments are complicated.
The knowledge shouldn’t be.
Payments Demystified is a free, plain-English series about how money actually moves—from card networks and ledgers to regulation, risk, and the product decisions behind them.
54+
free posts and counting
No prerequisite knowledge. No paywall required. Just practical context for builders, operators, and anyone curious about payments.
Follow the money
See what happens from authorization through settlement.
Understand the system
Connect banks, networks, processors, risk, and product.
Make better decisions
Turn infrastructure detail into useful product judgment.
Public roadmap
Help choose what gets demystified next.
Recommend a question you want answered. Upvote the ideas that would be most useful. The roadmap belongs to everyone learning alongside me.
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Top ideas
One vote per browser
Payment orchestration: when another layer helps
SuggestedA practical look at routing, retries, provider redundancy, and the cost of added abstraction.
What actually happens during a card dispute?
SuggestedFollow a dispute across the customer, issuer, network, acquirer, and merchant.
The payments metrics that can mislead product teams
SuggestedHow approval rate, loss rate, and payment success change when the denominator changes.
How I support teams
A typical approach for product and strategy engagements.
Frame the program model
Clarify product type, sponsor-bank constraints, and success metrics.
Map economics and risk
Identify where unit economics and compliance pressure shape key decisions.
Prioritize the roadmap
Sequence product and platform work into pragmatic execution milestones.
Ship and iterate
Launch with clear ownership, feedback loops, and decision hygiene.
Quick answers
What people usually ask first.
What do you focus on most right now?
Fintech product leadership, card program strategy, and payments education through Substack.
Where can I follow your writing?
Subscribe free on Substack at rickygraz.substack.com to receive Payments Demystified.
Can we connect directly?
Yes, LinkedIn is available at linkedin.com/in/rgraziosi.
How do we get started?
Use the contact page with project goals, timeline, and current blockers.
Want deeper payments breakdowns?
Join Payments Demystified for free, or help choose a future post on the public roadmap.