What “settlement” actually means
A card transaction isn’t money, it’s a promise. The authorisation confirms the issuer will pay; clearing and settlement is the multi-day process that turns the promise into a bank credit. In APAC, that process is run by twenty-plus acquirers under twenty-plus slightly different rule books, using file formats that range from elegant ISO 20022 XML to fixed-width text files from the 1980s. Tap Ledger ingests every one of them.
- Clearing-file ingestion. Automated SFTP pickup, format auto-detection, checksum verification, parser library covering fifty-plus acquirer file variants across APAC.
- Transaction matching. Every line in every clearing file is matched back to the authorisation that generated it. Unmatched lines are triaged and routed to your ops channel with the context needed to investigate.
- Fee attribution. Interchange, scheme fees, network access, cross-border surcharges, currency-conversion fees, each attributed to the transaction that incurred them. No more “what is this line item” emails at month-end.
- FX handling. Mid-market rates with an auditable mark-up; daily or per-transaction rates at your choice; every FX leg is booked as a separate ledger entry for accounting clarity.
- Dispute economics. Chargebacks, representments, and scheme fines flow back into the ledger automatically, debits land against the originating sub-merchant, not the platform balance.
Payout cadences, on your terms
The default for Tapped Platform customers is T+2, two business days after capture, net of fees and FX, into your sub-merchant’s local bank account. That’s the cadence that matches how most acquirers themselves settle to us. But for high-volume, high-trust sub-merchants you can offer faster cadences at higher margins.
Payout cadence is set per sub-merchant in the dashboard or via the Tap Ledger API. Promote a merchant to T+1 in code, trigger a one-off instant payout for a trust event, or fall back to weekly after a chargeback spike, the engine supports it.
Multi-currency, multi-entity, sub-ledger clean
Tap Ledger is a double-entry accounting engine underneath, not a spreadsheet. Every transaction creates immutable ledger entries in the merchant’s transaction currency, your platform’s operating currency, and the target payout currency. Period-end balances reconcile to acquirer statements to the cent. Financial controllers get ledger exports in the formats their ERP already speaks, QuickBooks, Xero, NetSuite, SAP, not a CSV of line items they have to massage.
// Example: one SGD 100 transaction on a MYR-settled acquirer
debit acquirer.MY.receivable MYR 354.00
credit merchant.sub_0912.payable SGD 100.00
credit platform.revenue.processing SGD 2.10
credit platform.revenue.fx SGD 0.25
debit scheme.visa.fees SGD 0.11Every balance is queryable at every point in time. Every entry links back to the scheme cryptogram that created it. No reconciliation black boxes.
Sub-merchant accounts, trust accounts, regulated custody
In most APAC markets, platforms that move customer money without holding it themselves need either a Payment Services licence or a relationship with a regulated custodian. Tap Ledger’s default posture is the latter, funds sit in segregated trust accounts with our banking partners in each market, you operate against them via the API, and the custody and regulatory burden stays with us. For platforms that want to hold their own licence, Tap Ledger runs in “passthrough” mode against your own trust accounts. Talk to sales for the architecture overview.
Frequently asked questions
Do we get the raw acquirer files, or just your parsed view?+
Both. Every raw acquirer clearing file we ingest is stored for seven years and available via the dashboard or API. The parsed ledger view sits on top of it, not in place of it.
How do you handle partial reversals and late-arriving chargebacks?+
Both are first-class ledger events. A partial refund creates a reverse entry against the original transaction and a corresponding payable adjustment on the sub-merchant’s next payout. A late chargeback (we’ve seen them land 180 days out) debits the merchant’s payable balance if funds exist, or creates a receivable the platform chooses how to collect.
What’s the FX mark-up?+
Mid-market plus 25 basis points, with the mid-market reference rate and timestamp stamped on every FX leg. You can mark this up further to your own sub-merchants, that spread is yours to keep. Enterprise customers with >USD 10M monthly FX volume can negotiate the base spread down.
Can we run Tap Ledger without Tap Core?+
Yes. A handful of customers use Tap Ledger as a standalone settlement and payout engine behind their own acquiring stack, we ingest their existing clearing files and run the netting, FX, and payout layer. It’s the same engine, just with more source-side connectors.
When does a sub-merchant get paid on a weekend transaction?+
T+2 means two business days after capture. A tap on Saturday morning clears Monday, appears in the acquirer file Tuesday, nets to the sub-merchant balance Tuesday, and lands in their bank Tuesday evening or Wednesday morning depending on the local rail cut-off. The dashboard always shows the exact expected arrival.