Interview Questions/System Design/Design a Payment Processing Gateway
AdvancedSystem-Design
45 min

Design a Payment Processing Gateway

PaymentsSecurityAPIsReliability
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Interview Question

Design a payment gateway supporting multiple processors, 3-D Secure, refunds, settlements, and PCI concerns.

Key Points to Cover
  • Tokenization service and vault; PCI isolation zones
  • Processor abstraction with routing and failover
  • Idempotency for charges/refunds; reconciliation jobs
  • 3DS/SCA flows and webhook verification
  • Dispute handling, settlement windows, ledger integrity
Evaluation Rubric
PCI isolation, tokenization, secure storage30% weight
Processor routing/failover design25% weight
Idempotent operations & webhooks25% weight
Reconciliation & ledger correctness20% weight
Hints
  • 💡Prefer webhooks behind signed secrets + retries.
Potential Follow-up Questions
  • How do you design a double-entry ledger?
  • How to run backfills safely?
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