Any interesting reads for those wanting to know more about how banking works on a technical level? I ask because I assume a lot is behind NDAs, but perhaps you know of a few exceptions.
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Haha. Brilliant.
Another, more specific question: do banks periodically send our account balances somewhere? If not, how does the FSCS protect us against a bank who goes entirely silent and doesn’t tell the authorities how much money each account had?
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ISO standards are a good place to look at the messaging protocols and basic standards that physical cards follow.
The Mastercard Transaction Processing Rules are also openly available. developers.mastercard.com is mainly merchant stuff but has some surface level information about issuer things too.
Other than that, a lot of the cool stuff is under NDA or at least isn’t publicly accessible. 
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The FSCS Single Customer View is what you’d want to read into here! All banks are required to compile it regularly.
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No @HoldenCarver was right actually.
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We had a new unembossed NatWest card handed in as lost property last week, they look kinda weird… (I’m just not used to them.) 
I’m so used to them being embossed, I’d worry that the lettering would eventually start to wear off as well.
My embossed Monzo lettering wore off in a few months and the cvv is barely legible. In contrast my starling and tide unembossed cards have lasted well and look a lot nicer (though I prefer Monzo’s bold colour). Never had a problem with acceptance of a non-embossed card.
Hoping Monzo do move on from the embossed lettering soon, if only to avoid the design crime imposed by the embossed date sitting right next to the name, in fact the alignment of all the embossed stuff is horrible.
Would be nice to lose the signature strip, embossing and maybe make the number less prominent since it is rarely used now anyway.
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Please no! Cameras really can’t read them
I’ve had problems with the amazon app mis-typing my embossed Monzo card so not really sure which is best 
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I prefer having an embossed card though
Hmm, wonder how much the app and or camera are factors too. Research topic, anyone?
How would this work in countries that don’t have Chip+PIN, or if the card machine is down and they have to do it manually (written or embossed)?
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I thought that was US market only?
Anyway, my question - what country do you see the most payment problems from? In my travel experience, some are far more problematic (US, Israel, Japan) than others (Canada, Germany [recently - it used to be awful], France).
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