THE RESEARCH STUDIO
An independent repository of strategic audits, deconstructed narratives, and structural analysis of the payment ecosystem.
THE ANALYTICAL FRAMEWORK
Everything published in this studio is built on three intersecting lenses.
The Gap Between Narrative and Reality
The payments industry is exceptionally good at producing stories about itself (seamlessness, unification, innovation, inclusion).
This studio’s work is consistently interested in the distance between those stories and the operational reality underneath them. Not to be cynical, but because strategy built on the industry’s self-description is strategy built on a facade.
Democratic Access to Structural Analysis
Nothing published here is privileged information. It is observation, rigorous analysis, and the decision to say clearly what the structural forces are and whose interests they serve. No gatekeeping. Free always.
Beyond Infrastructure: Payments as Power
Payments are not neutral rails. They are governance decisions, cultural constructions, and infrastructure choices that determine who controls value flows and who bears their cost. Every analysis here starts from that premise.
Critical analysis of the dominant narratives shaping payments, retail, and digital commerce
Case studies that apply the analytical framework to specific questions with direct operational consequences.
Conversations with practitioners, dissidents, and analysts who think honestly about the industry’s power dynamics.
Deep Dives: Where these pillars come to life.
The Unified Commerce Illusion: A 4-Step Deconstruction on the grand promise of industry
I analyse in detail the roots of the crisis in Retail, the lack of desirability, the need to find a saviour, and how the payment industry leveraged retail distress to push pre-packaged ‘solutions’ that ignore the merchants’ actual needs.
I pivot from technical jargon to power dynamics. I prove that ‘Omnichannel’ isn’t an API problem; it’s a political fight over data ownership and a game played where the merchants is the prey to be hunted. Payments became a predator of retail, not just a service provider fueled by a whole ecosystem who sold unified commerce as innovation
I use China as a benchmark to define what ‘Unified’ actually means when infrastructure and culture align. This further highlights the West’s structural fragmentation. Understand the blueprint before you try to build the house
The ultimate proof. I document how a ‘Platform Commerce’ powerhouse, HeyTea, struggles to translate its model into the Western ‘Scheme’ reality. Operational reality always wins against strategic storytelling
Research is here to identify the friction; Strategy navigates it.
While the Studio is a space for public deconstruction,
the Practice is where these insights are applied to specific, high-stakes roadmaps.
You can also receive a copy of the Studio Report, the monthly report on the activity of the Studio.