I went straight to the happy path and started sketching a simple event queue feeding into an outbound API.
Start by clarifying requirements: chargeback types, volume, latency, and compliance needs. Then design a reliable, idempotent pipeline that validates, formats, and transmits chargeback data to Visa's API, with retries, monitoring, and reconciliation. Discuss trade-offs between synchronous vs asynchronous processing and data consistency.
Pro tip: Emphasize idempotency and exactly-once semantics, as duplicate chargebacks can cause financial discrepancies. Also, mention the importance of audit trails and compliance with PCI DSS and Visa's specific chargeback rules.
Ask about chargeback volume, latency requirements, data sources, and Visa's API specifications. Understand compliance and security constraints.
Propose a pipeline: ingest chargeback events, validate and enrich data, queue for processing, and send to Visa via their API. Include retry and dead-letter queues.
Define the chargeback data model and map it to Visa's API format. Discuss authentication, rate limiting, and error handling for API calls.
Ensure idempotency with unique keys, implement retries with exponential backoff, and use a distributed queue for scalability. Consider partitioning by merchant or transaction ID.
Set up logging, metrics, and alerts for failures. Implement reconciliation to match sent chargebacks with Visa's responses and handle discrepancies.
AI-generated suggestions, not part of the candidate's original notes. May be inaccurate — verify before relying on them.