Payments

What is Double-entry accounting?

Double-entry accounting records each financial event as balanced debits and credits across accounts in a ledger. The entries must balance for a transaction, which helps expose omissions and makes balances derivable from history; it does not by itself prove that external funds settled.

A payment system may record a receivable, a customer liability, a fee, and a settlement movement as separate entries. Corrections are usually represented with additional reversing or adjusting entries instead of silently rewriting history. The ledger's account model and authorization rules still require independent review.

Balancing entries support auditability, but they do not guarantee that a ledger mirrors a bank, custodian, or blockchain. Reconcile internal entries against those independent sources on a defined schedule.

Definitions are educational and general. Nothing here is financial, legal or tax advice, and regulatory descriptions summarise frameworks that change — check the current rules for your jurisdiction before relying on them.