One of the reasons we felt compelled to write a book on payments – and write it now – is the extremely rapid pace of change; the niggling concern that held us back was the misplaced notion that we were “too late”. But the changes just keep coming. You can be late in payments, but until such time as we don’t have to pay, you can’t be “too late” to look at them. All the same, from the point at which the first metaphorical drop of ink fell on the page, lots has happened. Covid came and Wirecard went; Visa’s valuation outpaced JPMorgan's; Libra became Diem; Bitcoin soared and XRP cratered; China soft-launched a CBDC, Ant Group almost IPO’d and then didn’t … and much, much more besides. The proverbial ink now dry, this blog has been born and Gottfried Leibbrandt and Natasha de Terán will keep peering into the payments landscape providing the occasional commentary or amusing aside about things that impact on how we pay and get paid.