CPA follows five principles: Separation of concerns – risk, settlement, and data each stay in their own boundaries; Composability – every component is replaceable and rearrangeable; Openness – open APIs and contracts instead of proprietary formats; Programmability – everything is API-driven and automatable; and Evolvability – you add a PSP, update compliance rules, or adopt new technology incrementally, without large rewrites.

Together these principles let payment teams change one part of the stack without breaking the rest.

→ Read the CPA principles