Public brief
Discussion / designResponse prompt
Reported interview periodJan 2026–Sep 2026
Design hold-then-charge payments
Design a payment platform with two operations:
Practice focus- hold synchronously requests authorization from a downstream card network and must return approval or rejection within a 500 ms p95 target. - charge references an approved hold, durably records the request, acknowledges it, and includes it in a later settlement batch. Assume 10 million holds and 8 million charges per day, peaks near 300 requests per second, 5–10 downstream networks, a two-hour nightly settlement window, and a seven-day hold lifetime.…