THE TRANSACTION JOURNEY.

A single contactless wallet tap, tracked from the terminal to the issuer's approval and back, and every system it wakes up across six sectors of the network.

SCENARIO In-store · digital wallet tap (card present)//ROUTE 06 sectors · out & back//SOURCES Visa Core Rules · EMVCo · Visa Protect · AusPayNet

This interactive explainer follows a card payment from the moment you tap (or click pay online, or ask an AI assistant to buy) to the approval beep. The transaction travels through six sectors: the card, device or agent, the terminal or checkout, the merchant, the acquirer, the card network, and the issuing bank, then returns with the approval. Along the way it covers EMV cryptograms, network tokenisation, 3D Secure authentication, agentic commerce protocols and fraud risk scoring. JavaScript is required for the animated journey.

The authorisation route

SYSTEM // ROUTESTATUS LIVECLOCK 000 MS

READY

Press transmit to send the transaction on its way.

Sector detail: gates cleared, systems engaged, message stream

SYSTEM // SECTOR DETAILSTOP 00/11REQUEST

At this sectorREQ

Systems engaged

Message stream0100

SPACE PLAY/PAUSE · ←/→ STEP · CLICK ANY SECTOR TO JUMP

AUTHORISATION ONLY · FUNDS MOVE LATER VIA BASE II CLEARING + VSS SETTLEMENT →

AND WHEN IT GOES WRONG · THE RAINY DAYS →

The payments ecosystem reference

▸ The ecosystem every system in this flow, and the adjacent ones, with the job each does