Why Ledgers, Not Mutable Balances, Explain Every Rupee in a Payments System
A payments system's mutable balance column cannot explain how a merchant's figure was reached, such as why a payout is ₹980 rather than ₹1,000. A production ledger solves this with an append-only, double-entry record in which every journal balances per currency and posted entries are never edited. Amounts are stored as integer minor units with explicit ISO 4217 currency codes, and corrections are made through linked compensating entries. Balances are derived projections of postings, and each money movement traces back to its originating event. The article illustrates this with a ₹1,000 payment carrying a ₹20 fee, showing how capture and settlement are recorded as separate balanced journals.
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