Okay, allow me to brag a little today. Please excuse me. :-) Today, Silq is the leading embedded-finance platform in Saudi Arabia. And I may have been the first to conceive and patent embedded checkout, an early precursor to today’s embedded finance. Here is that story. In 2008, paying through a third-party payment service such as PayPal typically meant leaving the merchant's website. Customers clicked a payment button, were redirected to the payment provider's website, authenticated themselves, gave the payment info, and then returned to complete the purchase. I was working on Amazon Pay at that time and thought there had to be a better way. My idea was to embed checkout within the merchant's website instead of redirecting the customer elsewhere. The payment provider should be able to present the checkout experience inside the merchant's page. Customers should be able to use their stored payment and shipping info, while their sensitive credentials travel directly to the payment provider and remain invisible to the merchant. I came up with two ways of achieving this. 1. Quick Checkout (U.S. Patent No. 10528931) The "Quick Checkout" architecture used provider-controlled components embedded within the merchant's page. Sensitive information went directly to the provider, rather than passing through the merchant. The architectural principle eventually became standard across modern payments: - Braintree Hosted Fields uses provider-controlled iFrames, so raw card information never reaches the merchant's server. - Stripe Elements uses Stripe-hosted components embedded within the merchant's checkout, with sensitive card details going directly to Stripe. - Adyen similarly embeds provider-managed payment experiences within merchants' websites. 2. Instant Checkout (U.S. Patent No. 9324098) Instant Checkout took the idea further. The payment provider could recognize the customer through its cookie, retrieve the customer’s default payment and shipping information, and deliver a one-click experience within the merchant’s website. That idea also grew into a major category: - Bolt created a cross-merchant shopper network offering embedded one-click checkout. - Shop Pay made stored payment and shipping info reusable across Shopify merchants. - PayPal also allowed customers to complete purchases without leaving the merchant experience. Embedded checkout brought payments into the purchasing journey. Embedded financing brings capital into the same journey. Both reflect the same conviction: services should appear naturally at the moment of need - not force customers into a separate process.