The Front Lines of the Hand-Coded Economy

In 2001, being "cutting edge" in e-commerce meant something entirely different than it does today. While working in customer support for ImageCafe—then a pioneer in the website-building space under Verisign—I was at the epicenter of a digital gold rush. Small business owners were desperate to sell online, but the infrastructure was a fragmented puzzle of raw code and nascent gateways. My days were spent helping customers navigate the nuances of our platform to manually add CCNow payment buttons using HTML. We were essentially teaching the market how to trust a digital transaction, paying the "Education Tax" for a future we could only partially see.

The Founders' Path: Scaling the Niche

CCNow was a classic example of an organization operating as a "Merchant of Record" before the industry had fully standardized the term. While CCNow later underwent several ownership changes, the leadership involved in that era of e-commerce consolidation continued to shape the digital economy. Robert "Bob" Brisco, who has been CEO of Internet Brands since 1999 and later became CEO of WebMD Health Corp, successfully scaled a portfolio of niche-authority sites, including the legal marketplace rebranded as Martindale-Avvo (MLA 9: "Robert N. Brisco - CEO at WebMD"). His career mirrors the evolution from early website builders to massive, vertically integrated digital ecosystems.

The Consolidation Era: PayPal and Verisign

As the market matured, the "button" became a platform. I saw this transition firsthand while working with Digital River, which managed e-commerce for Network Solutions. In October 2005, the circle closed when PayPal announced its acquisition of Verisign’s payment gateway business for approximately $370 million (MLA 9: "PayPal to Acquire VeriSign's Payment Gateway Business"). This move effectively merged the infrastructure I had supported at ImageCafe into the broader PayPal ecosystem. Today, history appears to be rhyming; reports have recently surfaced regarding renewed takeover interest in PayPal as the company seeks to maintain its edge in a landscape increasingly defined by API-first competitors.

The Great Divergence: US vs. India

The most striking contrast in my 25-year journey is the divergence between US and Indian payment infrastructure. In the US, we are still largely tethered to the legacy card rails established during the Verisign era. In contrast, India has achieved a state of near-zero friction. The Unified Payments Interface (UPI) has leapfrogged the credit card era entirely. As of 2025, UPI is processing over 250 billion annual transactions with a value of roughly $3.4 trillion. On specific measures, such as daily transaction counts, UPI has been reported to rival or even exceed the volumes of global leaders like Visa (MLA 9: "Unified Payments Interface").

Native Ecosystems: The Zoho Payments Shift

In 2026, the industry has shifted away from the "glue-and-code" model of the CCNow era toward unified, native financial stacks. Zoho Payments represents the culmination of this evolution. By launching a native payment solution deeply integrated into their Lead-to-Cash cycle (Zoho Books, Billing, and Commerce), they have removed the friction of third-party gateways. This "one-team" support model solves the reconciliation and dispute headaches I witnessed two decades ago. For businesses today, the software is the payment rail, offering instant settlements that mirror the speed of the Indian UPI model within a Western B2B framework.