Settlement Engine Design

Architectural overview

Settlement reconciles internal records with bank or gateway statements. Match transactions by reference id, amount, and date; flag mismatches for exception handling. Runs in batches with clear cut-off times.

Tradeoffs

• Batch vs real-time: batch is simpler and aligns with bank cycles; real-time adds complexity.

Scaling considerations

Partition by settlement date and tenant. Store reconciliation results for audit. Use idempotent job keys for reruns.

Common pitfalls

• Matching on amount only without reference id, causing false matches.
• No exception queue; mismatches get lost or require manual SQL.