Polishing Python: Preventing Performance Corrosion with Rust

Steps to run the payment handler scripts:

1. install Rust
2. create a Python 3.10 virtual environment
3. install Poetry in this virtual environment and install the project's dependencies (poetry install) Note: The lock file in the repo was generated with Poetry 1.8.3
4. ensure you put the path to your virtual environment in VIRTUAL_ENV (export VIRTUAL_ENV=<path_to_virtual_env>)
5. build and install the wheel in your Python environment (maturin develop)
6. generate payment batches with make generate_payments
7. run the Python and Rust payment handler with make python_handler, make rust_parallel_handler and rust_single_threaded_handler, respectively