At Sendcash Pay, we're building an Automated P2P Payment Network.

What is an Automated P2P Payment Network?

Traditional payment processing

Generally, services (like Stripe) that help businesses accept payments on the internet operate a centralised model. To illustrate this, I'll use the following terms:

• PP - This refers to a payment processing service, like Stripe.
• Merchant(s) - This is the business or businesses trying to accept internet payments.
• End User(s) - This are the users paying Merchant(s) for goods and services.

Here's how money flows with traditional payment processing:

1. PP takes money from an End User on behalf of a Merchant.
2. PP stores this money in their own bank account(s) and keeps a record of how much money they're keep for each Merchant.
3. Whenever a Merchant wants to withdraw their money, they can do so (either via GUI or an API call). When this happens, PP sends the funds across to the Merchant and updates their records accordingly.

In this scenario, PP is responsible for the custody of all the funds for every Merchant and this makes it a centralised system.

Contrast this with agent networks like Paga, where agents collect funds on behalf of the End User and custody it. Funds are spread across 27,000+ agents nationwide. This is significantly more distributed and it's similar what we want to achieve, albeit without any of the manual processes involved in a traditional agent network.

Essay Prompt

Given that Sendcash Pay has the ability to programmatically trigger/initiate bank transfers, write an essay (approx 700 words) that details how you would go about building an Automated P2P Payment Network (APPN) where:

• The APPN lets Merchants accept & disburse payments (from/to End Users) via an API.
• Custody of funds is distributed.
• Human involvement in any of the processes is kept to an absolute minimum.

Your essay should make sure to address the following:

• High level technical architecture & design.