Financial Infrastructure
From ledgers and payment rails to clearing, settlement and the plumbing of modern money.
In this track · 10 lessons
Foundations
3 lessons- 1Money is a ledger~12 minInteractiveStrip away the coins and apps and money is really just entries in ledgers. Double-entry bookkeeping — the self-balancing record behind all of finance — is where this track begins.
- 2How a payment actually moves~13 minInteractivePaying someone at another bank isn't one instant event — it's a sequence of messages and promises across ledgers that only becomes final at settlement.
- 3Clearing and settlement~12 minBetween many banks, settling every payment one by one is wasteful. Clearing nets the flood of obligations down to small net figures — the quiet machinery that lets the financial system scale.
Core
3 lessons- 4Card payments — the four-party model~14 minInteractiveTapping a card looks instant, but behind it sit four parties and two phases. The four-party model explains who's involved, who gets paid, and why.
- 5Faster, and across borders~14 minDomestic payments are getting instant while cross-border payments stay slow and costly. Real-time rails, correspondent banking and SWIFT explain the gap.
- 6The modern money stack~14 minInteractiveFintech APIs, ledgers-as-a-product, and blockchain settlement are reshaping how money moves — all still resting on the ledgers and rails you already understand.
Advanced
2 lessons- 7How money is created~14 minInteractiveMost money isn't printed by the central bank — it's created by commercial banks when they lend. Understanding the money hierarchy is understanding where money actually comes from.
- 8Market infrastructure and systemic risk~15 minBehind every trade sits invisible plumbing — clearing houses and settlement systems — designed to stop one failure becoming everyone's failure. When it breaks, the whole system can.
Expert
2 lessons- 9Risk and regulation — the guardrails~15 minThe rules that keep finance from blowing up: capital and liquidity buffers, the fight against dirty money, and the settlement risk that took down a bank and reshaped the system.
- 10The frontier — where money infrastructure is heading~14 minCentral bank digital currencies, tokenised assets and instant global settlement are redrawing the plumbing. What's real, what's hype, and how it all connects back to the ledger.
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