The recent launch of Payment Ninja is one small step toward 100% free payment acceptance for merchants, and one giant leap for the San Francisco-based payment company that demoed its technology at FinovateSpring 2016. Payment Ninja went live in the U.K. at the end of April and will be available in EU countries, the U.S., and Canada “one-by-one in the coming weeks,” according to company co-founder Andrey Morozov.

“We believe the change is imminent,” Morozov wrote in a blog post at the Payment Ninja website. “Our mission is to provide cutting-edge card payment services at a fraction of the cost and, eventually, for free. You can keep the extra cash for yourself or you can pass it on to your customers via lower prices, loyalty programs, and better quality.”

Calling payment fees “a hidden tax on the world economy, “Morozov credited his 15 years experience in the payment industry for encouraging him to co-found Payment Ninja. Integrating the solution only requires adding a few lines of code and enables merchants to accept credit and debit cards as well as other local payment methods, and accepts any currency. Payment Ninja routes the transaction to the best available international card processor, enabling “the highest approval rates … and no downtime ever,” according to CEO Daria Dubinina. The white-label solution is available both for online and mobile environments, and Payment Ninja plans on generating revenues by helping merchants sell value-added products on the platform as well as providing analytic data on transactions.

Founded in 2012, Payment Ninja demonstrated its payment technology at FinovateSpring 2016. We profiled the company as part of our Finovate Debut series last summer.