Nearly 90 percent of Americans carry credit cards, yet 27 million businesses in the U.S. don’t accept them. Thanks to the sophisticated technology of smartphones, giving and accepting credit payments over the phone is a cheap, efficient, and safe solution. Investments are flooding into the mobile payment ^[1] industry—just weeks after American Express announced its investment in Payfone, a mobile payments start-up based in New York, The New York Times reports Visa has decided to back Square ^[2], the mobile payments start-up founded by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey.

Both Visa and Square have declined to quantify the investment, but experts believe the move solidifies Square as a major player in the mobile payments industry. Square, who will add a Visa executive to its advisory board, signs up about 100,000 merchants for its service each month.

Read more from The New York Times ^[2].