Fin Loom

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Payments

Every digital purchase depends on infrastructure most people never see. In a matter of seconds, a payment connects banks, card networks, wallets, merchants, processors, software platforms, regulators, and customers.

Fin Loom examines the systems that move the money.

See Payments Research
A customer holding a phone over a payment terminal on a cafe counter

What You Will Find Here

  • Digital payments
  • Payment processors
  • Wallets
  • Checkout technology
  • Card networks
  • Remittances
  • Cross-border payments
  • Open banking
  • Account-to-account payments
  • Payment security
  • Company deep dives

From Click to Settlement

A checkout screen is only the visible layer. Behind it sit authorization, fraud controls, funding, processing, settlement, fees, foreign exchange, and compliance. Knowing those layers makes payment-industry trends easier to judge.

Scale Is Only Part of the Story

Payment volume can grow faster than revenue. Transaction counts can rise while margins fall, and a large user base does not guarantee strong economics. Fin Loom tracks the relationship between payment activity and the value created from it.

In numbers

How Much Retail Has Moved Online

Every online purchase is also a digital payment. The share of U.S. retail sales made online is one measure of how much payment activity has shifted.

Official data

E-Commerce as a Share of U.S. Retail Sales

Online sales made up 17.1% of U.S. retail sales in Q2 2026, compared with 6.9% in Q1 2015.

  • Latest, Q2 202617.1%
  • Q1 20156.9%
0%5%10%15%20%201520172019202120232025

Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Quarterly Retail E-Commerce Sales. Series: E-Commerce Retail Sales as a Percent of Total Sales (ECOMPCTSA), percent, seasonally adjusted, retrieved from FRED on October 3, 2026. Latest figure: Q2 2026. The source agency revises these figures.

View the numbers
PeriodPercent
Q4 20157.4%
Q4 20168.2%
Q4 20179.1%
Q4 20189.9%
Q4 201911.2%
Q4 202015%
Q4 202114.6%
Q4 202214.6%
Q4 202315.5%
Q4 202416.2%
Q4 202516.7%
Q2 202617.1%

Payments Research

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