Blog · Industry
Retail and Ecommerce
Writing from Sawhorse Engineering on retail and ecommerce.
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- 19
- Category
- Industry
- 24 September 2026What PCI DSS actually requires of a small merchantPCI DSS scope is decided by how card data flows through your systems, not by your size. Here is what changes when the card never touches your servers.
- 23 September 2026How to tell whether a task is an AI problemFour questions that separate work worth evaluating with a model from work that belongs in ordinary code.
- 22 September 2026EMV, tokenization and 3D Secure explained properlyThree payment security mechanisms that get confused with each other. What each one actually does, where it applies, and what it protects you from.
- 19 September 2026How to handle chargebacks in softwareA dispute is a workflow with a deadline, not an email. What to build so evidence is assembled automatically and nothing expires unanswered.
- 18 September 2026Build versus buy: the questions that decide itMost build versus buy debates go wrong by comparing a licence fee to a project cost. The real comparison is different.
- 17 September 2026Payment orchestration: when it is worth it and when it is notRouting payments across several processors solves real problems at scale and creates real complexity below it. How to tell which side you are on.
- 16 September 2026Guardrails for AI agents that take real actionsAn agent with tools can change your data. The controls that matter are enforced in code, not requested in a prompt.
- 15 September 2026Idempotency: the idea that prevents duplicate everythingA lost response can turn a reasonable retry into a duplicate order, email or charge. Idempotency helps, but its boundary must include the actual effect.
- 10 September 2026When to use an orchestrator and when to write codeA workflow tool and a service solve the same problems differently. Four criteria that settle which one a specific process needs.
- 9 September 2026Deciding which system owns which fieldA sync cannot resolve conflicting business rules on its own. Decide who can write each field before connecting the systems.
- 8 September 2026Dead letter queues, and why silence is the worst failureA failed integration needs a visible recovery path. Retry budgets, failed work queues and reconciliation prevent errors from disappearing into logs.
- 5 September 2026Webhooks done properlyReceiving webhooks is easy. Receiving them so that duplicates, replays, out of order delivery and outages do not corrupt your data takes six specific things.
- 4 September 2026Testing what matters rather than chasing coverageA coverage percentage tells you almost nothing. Ranking behaviour by what a failure would cost tells you where to spend.
- 3 September 2026Building an API other people will useAn internal API that becomes a partner API exposes every undocumented assumption. What to settle before the first external caller.
- 2 September 2026Performance budgets, and why averages lieA page that is fast on a development machine with fifty records tells you nothing. Set the budget first and measure against real conditions.
- 29 August 2026Why the database should refuse invalid dataApplication validation holds only for the paths someone remembered. A constraint holds for every path, including the import script written at midnight.
- 27 August 2026Evaluating an AI feature before it shipsWithout a fixed set of real cases, the only available verdict on a prompt change is that it seems better. Here is how to build one that is worth trusting.
- 25 August 2026Where AI should hand over to a personThe handover is a design decision with commercial consequences. Getting it wrong in either direction is expensive.
- 23 August 2026Reconciliation: the job that runs when nothing is wrongScheduled comparisons can find missing or inconsistent records even when no request reported an error.
Other industry categories
- Home Services
- Lawn, Landscaping and Pest
- Cleaning and Facility Services
- Construction and Contractors
- Real Estate and Property
- Automotive
- Fitness and Sports
- Beauty, Salons and Spas
- Pet Services
- Restaurants and Hospitality
- Travel and Tours
- E Learning
- Professional Services
- Media and Creators
- Events and Venues
- Membership Organizations
- Nonprofits
- Manufacturing and Wholesale
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