Visa has invested an undisclosed sum in LoopPay, a privately-held US firm that enables merchants to accept mobile payments without having to invest heavily in new hardware.

“We are thrilled to have Visa as a partner and investor,” said Will Graylin, CEO of LoopPay. “We look forward to working with them and our other partners, including card issuers and device OEMs, to deliver the best possible commerce experience for both consumers and merchants alike as the world moves toward mobile payments.”

Jim McCarthy, Visa’s SVP of innovation and strategic partnerships, said LoopPay had developed “compelling technology”.

LoopPay invented Magnetic Secure Transmission (MST), a proprietary technology which leverages existing point-of-sale (PoS) infrastructure to receive contactless payments from mobile devices of all kinds with no hardware changes required by merchants.

MST aims to reduce reliance on magnetic stripes to store and transmit cardholder data, and instead uses a secure chip to store and transmit data to existing POS terminals via a small low-cost inductive loop that could be embedded in a variety of devices, including smartphones.

The Visa investment is part of a larger strategic funding round for LoopPay, announced earlier this month, which includes Synchrony Financial (formerly GE Capital Retail Finance) and other strategic partners not yet named.