- Sean Barkulis
- 2 days ago
- 8 min read

Shopping small today often means being able to pay with a tap, a swipe or a click. For any small business owner learning how to start a business, a sound payment acceptance strategy is essential. But behind those seamless transactions lies a complex world of technology, consumer expectations and rapid changes shaped by both global and local trends.
For more than 20 years, Moneris has been at the forefront of this evolution, helping Canadian businesses adapt to everything from eCommerce and mobile payments to the latest in AI-driven fraud prevention. As a leading payment solutions provider—and a valued Wix channel partner—Moneris is dedicated to supporting small businesses at every stage of their growth.
Wix’s Sean Barkulis, an SMB online commerce expert and global partnerships leader, has spent his career empowering small businesses with digital technology and innovation.
Sean sat down with Mia Huntington, Chief Sales and Marketing Officer (CSMO) at Moneris and a payments industry veteran, to explore her insights on the changing payments landscape, the challenges facing small businesses and the opportunities that new technologies and industry partnerships can offer. From alternative payment methods to omnichannel commerce, Mia shares her perspective on what’s shaping the future—and how solutions like Moneris Total Commerce are empowering Canadian merchants to thrive in a digital-first world.
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The future of small business payments
Sean Barkulis: Great to have you here, Mia. Let’s get right into it.
How do you see the small business payments landscape evolving over the next three to five years, both globally and specifically in Canada?
Mia Huntington: Thanks for having me, Sean. Great first question.
The world of payments is changing fast, and businesses both in Canada and abroad are right in the middle of it. With the ever-changing expectations of consumers, businesses are navigating a rapidly evolving landscape shaped by several key industry trends, from the acceleration of eCommerce and mobile commerce (mCommerce) to AI in eCommerce and new regulations.
These shifts present both challenges and significant opportunities. Staying ahead of these trends will be critical for small businesses, making it essential to have a partner like Moneris who understands the market and can help these businesses remain competitive, adapt quickly and position themselves for growth.
One thing is clear: eCommerce and mCommerce are here to stay. Today’s customers expect to find businesses on the web, not just in a physical location. Being visible online isn’t just a nice-to-have; it’s essential for long-term success.
Today, it’s impossible to talk about the future of commerce without talking about AI. While AI isn’t new, it’s becoming more useful and accessible every day.
At Moneris, we’ve leveraged AI for several years, helping to speed up decision-making when onboarding new businesses, assessing fraud risk on transactions and more. Generative AI presents new opportunities to drive improved automation and efficiency for fraud detection and prevention, not just for Moneris, but also for the businesses it supports. With the onset of Real-Time Rail (RTR), for example, AI will become critical for fraud prevention, enabling the ability to detect fraud quickly and accurately.
We see AI becoming more accessible to small businesses, offering powerful tools to help streamline operations, improve customer service and create more personalized shopping experiences. Platforms like Wix’s AI website builder and its online commerce and booking tools already make it easier to build smart, professional websites, and we expect even more innovation in this space. It’s an exciting time, and we see these technologies helping small businesses work smarter and scale more efficiently.
In Canada, we are seeing progress on the regulatory work to lay the groundwork for RTR and Open Banking, called Consumer-driven Banking (CDB) in Canada. These offer meaningful improvements to everyday processes, such as getting paid faster, issuing real-time refunds and reducing fraud, which will help with cash flow, provide better experiences to consumers and reduce risk for both businesses and consumers.

SB: What do you believe are the biggest pain points that SMBs face today when it comes to payment processing, and how can the industry provide better support?
MH: Small businesses today want a solution that works seamlessly, meeting their customers where and when they want—in-store, online and on mobile channels. And they want to do this while managing their business efficiently, reducing complexity and eliminating manual processes. With so many choices and a fragmented market, it can feel overwhelming. They want a solution covering as many bases as possible from a single source with little friction, but many end up attempting to stitch solutions together unsuccessfully.
This is where Moneris Total Commerce (MTC) comes in. We partnered with Wix to create a solution that brings everything together in one place: website, inventory, bookings, in-store and online payments, customer data, business insights and more, taking the stress out of managing payments and business operations. Small businesses want a solid, seamless out-of-the-box experience, and MTC delivers a complete, ready-to-use solution that’s designed to grow with them and create a smooth experience for both the business and their customers.
At Moneris, we support our customers by focusing on the full customer journey. With Moneris Total Commerce, we’re helping small businesses simplify operations, save time and deliver better experiences—every step of the way.

SB: What role do you see alternative payment methods (e.g., digital wallets, BNPL, real-time payments) playing in how SMBs accept payments, and how can the industry address this?
MH: Today’s customers expect more flexibility and choice in how they pay, whether that’s using a digital wallet, splitting a purchase into installments or paying in real time. For small businesses, keeping up with these expectations is key to staying competitive and delivering a great customer experience.
When we talk about delivering a commerce journey for merchants, it’s not just about one solution to fit all needs. It’s about variety—leveraging strong partnerships and value-added services to deliver on a customer-centric design. Whether it’s services like fraud prevention tools (ie. 3D-Secure or Multi-currency), or alternative payment methods like Buy-Now-Pay-Later solutions (ie. Visa installments), giving choice is critical to delivering on that commerce journey.
As the APMs market grows, we continue to evolve our offerings. These APMs are essential to meeting consumers’ and businesses' evolving needs. Consumers are increasingly digital-first, and we need to help enable businesses with the right tools to address various payment methods and convenience. By integrating APMs like Visa installments into our current Moneris Total Commerce (MTC) solution, we offer the flexibility businesses seek. It’s our goal to ensure businesses using MTC have a solution that provides consumers with a seamless, flexible checkout experience across all channels to help boost conversion and customer satisfaction.
Beyond what we offer, Wix also has many eCommerce options to meet the wide variety of merchant needs for their business. Whether that’s reservations, recurring payments, ticketing or other services, together, it allows us to provide the most robust omnichannel commerce solution in the market today.

The importance of omnichannel commerce
SB: How has consumer behavior changed in recent years, and what does that mean for SMBs that only operate in a single channel (only online or offline)? What about the businesses that serve SMBs?
MH: Consumer behavior has evolved significantly over the past 10 years and accelerated considerably in the last five. The rise of smart devices and mobile experience, the desire to always be connected, and the digital-first lifestyle have shifted consumer expectations around convenience, security and personalization. Using smartphones or other mobile devices to shop or make purchases via browser or in-app has become quite common and has only accelerated.
Looking back at the COVID-19 pandemic, we saw a massive uptick in eCommerce with lockdowns and other restrictions. That also led to a dramatic change in consumer behavior around things like tap to pay (contactless transactions). Before the pandemic, we saw tap limits of $100 per transaction. In a world where people were afraid to touch objects, the increase in tap limits to $250+ really changed behavior. Tap was always well represented, accounting for around half of transactions, but that jumped to over 70%.
Additionally, many smaller businesses suddenly needed to get online with a business website and social media if they didn’t already have a presence. Terms like ‘omnichannel commerce’ became very meaningful to businesses. Even if they weren’t selling their products online, the ability to showcase their business, offer things like curbside pick-up, etcetera, really made a huge difference in their ability to succeed.
Today, consumers want to choose when, how and what they pay with. Whether that’s a physical card, digital wallet, BNPL, contactless, etc., they now expect that convenience. The difference between an in-store and online experience has narrowed, and consumers want seamless, consistent experiences for payments and personalized interactions across all channels. As part of that expectation, there’s significantly more awareness around privacy and security, including data security, website security and secure payment methods. As a result, more and more solutions leverage things like tokenization for storing payment data to limit the risk to a business while ensuring customers’ information is secure.
All these changes are now a requirement for most businesses. If you’re a small business selling goods or services through a single channel, you’re limiting your business, your revenue and potentially your ability to thrive. And if you’re in the business of serving SMBs, offering omnichannel solutions is going to be a big part of the support they’ll need for the future.

SB: Moneris and Wix have partnered to bring omnichannel commerce solutions to SMBs across Canada. How does this help Moneris support its customers?
MH: Moneris is focused on the merchant and their customers’ experience. We see our partnership with Wix as part of this goal, and our ongoing digital advancements.
We partnered with Wix in 2023 to address the needs of our customers and deliver a comprehensive eCommerce solution that simplifies online sales with the launch of Moneris Online. From there, we built on that relationship success and worked to bring Moneris Total Commerce—a complete omnichannel solution—to market with Wix, helping streamline operations and enhance customer experiences across digital and in-store environments. MTC offers merchants a user-friendly solution, without the need for complex installations or configurations.

SB: What’s your advice for small businesses opening shop online?
MH: Identifying your target audience is key to attracting them. Study competitors’ websites to see what resonates with your prospective clients. But that’s just the beginning.
Prioritize the user experience for both you and your customers. That means choosing the right platform is key. Moneris Online and Moneris Total Commerce are great solutions that combine a leading website builder (Wix) that’s easy-to-use, affordable and scalable. They also allow you to deliver a fast, mobile-friendly, easy-to-navigate experience for your customers and a clean, intuitive checkout process that reduces friction and can help make or break a sale.
Once you’ve done all that, start small and scale up; you don’t want to immediately dump your 100-item inventory online. Focus on what sells best, and build your inventory incrementally as you build your audience. Over time, you’ll want to start considering search engine optimization (like Wix SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM), as well as other ways to attract more business and put you at the top of people's minds when looking for the products you sell.
Once you’ve been up and running for a while, there are other solutions to start considering, like data analytics. Not just the SEO and SEM data, but your sales data—what trends you’re seeing, peak sales times, cart abandonment rates, average sale size, where your customers are coming from, top-performing products, etc. These are all data points you’ll be able to access through MTC (via Wix Analytics), and gain additional insights from Moneris through our Data Services solutions.
Many great resources are available for businesses today, including informational blogs we offer to our merchants and articles from Wix on how to make a business website. You should also ensure your solution providers offer strong customer service and support. Moneris prides itself on its live 24/7 support for merchants and our ability to send our field services teams in store to help troubleshoot issues merchants can’t solve on their own. Business owners—and the businesses that serve them—should leverage all the support and insights they can to make informed decisions and drive online success.
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