Put Card clearing & settlement back in order

THE DRILL AS TEXT

1. In Card clearing & settlement, what happens first, and what follows?
   • Demo Coffee closes the day's batch — At end of day the terminal sends its captured sales — each with its authorisation code — to Meridian Bank. Until this capture, Maya's EUR 42.50 exists only as an approval and a hold.
   • Meridian Bank submits clearing records to Cardnet — The acquirer turns each captured sale into a clearing record and presents it to the network — the presentment. Each record references its authorisation so the issuer can match it to the hold it placed.
   • Cardnet runs the clearing cycle and applies interchange — The network validates each record and attaches interchange — the fee the acquirer pays the issuer on each transaction, set under the scheme's rules. The record now says exactly who owes whom, and how much of it is fee.
   • Cardnet calculates each bank's net position — Across the day's records, everything each bank owes and is owed collapses into one net figure per participant — multilateral netting. Bank Alfa owes the net of what its cardholders spent; Meridian Bank is owed the net of what its merchants sold.
   • Net amounts move between settlement accounts — The scheme's settlement bank moves each participant's net amount. On this transaction Bank Alfa settles EUR 42.40 to Meridian Bank — the EUR 42.50 sale less the illustrative EUR 0.10 interchange the issuer retains — inside Bank Alfa's larger net payment. This is the moment money actually moves between the banks, typically a day or two after the sale, on a timetable each scheme's rules set.
   • Bank Alfa posts the final debit and releases the hold — The cleared record replaces the authorisation hold: the reserve is released and a posted debit takes its place. Only now has Maya's money actually left her account — the 'pending' line on her app becomes a booked transaction.