In 2010 I opened Winny’s Vitamins & Supplements, an online store that also sold on eBay. Every monthly statement carried the same line: the cost of getting paid. Later I built Limitless, a wellness brand whose products sell online, on Amazon and in retail, and that line was still there. For most of my career, payments were something my businesses paid for and rarely thought about.
That changed in July 2026, when MannyPay Global Inc. launched merchant payment processing in the United States, with Manny Pacquiao as Chairman and me as Chief Executive Officer. Sitting on the other side of that statement has changed how I think about where money is going next. What follows is my view of the industry, not a forecast for any company.
Payments Are Moving Inside the Software People Already Use
Embedded finance is a simple idea. A company that is not a bank offers a financial service inside its own product. A booking app takes the deposit. A point-of-sale system offers faster access to funds. An online store saves your card so the next order takes one tap.
For the customer, the financial part fades into the experience. For the business, payments stop being a separate vendor and become part of the product. That is why so many software companies want to own the payment flow instead of sending customers somewhere else to pay.
The effect is that more businesses become, in a small way, financial businesses. A gym that bills memberships, a restaurant that takes deposits for large tables and a store that offers installments are all handling money on someone’s behalf. That raises the bar for how carefully they choose the systems underneath.
The Wallet Is Becoming the Front Door
A digital wallet used to mean a place to store a card. Now it is closer to an identity. It can hold payment credentials, loyalty cards, receipts and sometimes a balance. When a customer checks out with a wallet, the merchant gets a faster checkout and the customer skips typing a card number.
I think the wallet becomes the default way people start a transaction, online and at the counter. The merchants that benefit will be the ones whose checkout accepts whatever wallet the customer already trusts, with as few steps as possible.
I should be precise about my own side of this. The MannyPay wallet app is not live. Its launch is planned for March 2027, and I would rather say that plainly than describe something people cannot use today.
Small Merchants Need Clarity and Trust
Large retailers negotiate their rates. A restaurant owner, a food truck or a neighborhood gym usually does not. They get a statement full of line items and a rate they cannot easily compare with anyone else’s.
What a small merchant needs is rarely new technology. They want to know what they pay and why. They want their money when they need it. And they want payments to connect to the rest of how they run the business, from inventory to payroll. I expect the next phase of payments to be judged on clarity as much as on features.
Underneath clarity sits trust. Every wave of financial technology runs into the same question: will people trust it with their money? A wallet only works if customers believe their information is safe. A processor only works if merchants believe the deposit will arrive on time.
That is why I care about who stands behind a payment brand. Manny Pacquiao is an eight-division world champion with fans around the world, and a name like his gets a first conversation started. It does not settle a single transaction. In payments, trust is earned the slow way, one deposit at a time.
Three Questions for Any Business Owner
Look at your payment setup the way you look at rent or payroll. It is a real cost and it deserves a real review, whoever your processor is. Ask three questions:
- Do I understand every line on my processing statement?
- Can my customers pay the way they want to pay, including with a digital wallet?
- Does my payment system connect to the tools I use to run the business?
If the answer to any of them is no, that is where the work starts. Call the provider, ask for the statement to be explained line by line and compare it with at least one alternative. A business owner who would never sign a lease without reading it often signs a processing agreement on trust.
Where This Goes
I do not know which apps or banks will win the next 10 years of payments, and I am wary of anyone who claims to. What I do believe is that payments will keep moving closer to the moment of purchase and further from the customer’s attention.
That shift puts more responsibility on the businesses in the middle. When paying becomes invisible to the customer, the merchant and the people who serve the merchant carry the job of getting it right. The companies that make that simple, honest and affordable for a small business will earn their place.
More on what I have built over the years is on my About page, and the businesses mentioned here are profiled under MannyPay Global and Winny’s Vitamins & Supplements.