Private equity firms often have significant payments volume spread across portfolio companies, processors, gateways, contracts, and pricing models. The processors may understand that payments footprint better than the sponsor does. That can hide leverage, duplication, cost, risk, and monetization opportunities.

Passing a PCI assessment does not mean you have a functioning PCI program. Security, engineering, compliance, operations, legal, vendors, and leadership may each own part of PCI, but somebody still needs to own the whole program between assessments.

Open USD signals that stablecoins are moving from crypto product to payments infrastructure. That may create real opportunities for faster settlement, cross-border movement, platform payouts, and shared economics, but shared infrastructure still needs governance, reconciliation, compliance, reserve oversight, risk ownership, and adult supervision.

Most ISVs only see the payment API. Underneath it? A pile of ISO8583 voodoo, refund tricks, token traps, and margin games nobody puts in the sales deck. If you don't understand the stack, you don't know where your money is going.