Executives who attended the Electronic Transactions Association's TRANSACT 14 conference earlier this month believe new payments technology is the trend that will gain the most momentum in the industry in 2014, according to a survey from CAN Capital Inc.

The survey found 42 percent of the conference's attendees cited new payments technology as an area that will make significant gains this year, followed by product integration (24 percent), increased partnerships (23 percent) and company consolidation (11 percent)

Furthermore, mobile payments technology was identified by 61 percent of payments professionals as the fastest-growing, merchant-focused product offering over the past 12 months. Other merchant-focused product offerings identified as growing over the past 12 months included cloud accounting services (12 percent) and automated business loans (11 percent).

"As consumers continue to turn to mobile to complete everyday tasks and purchases, payments providers must be able to offer innovative mobile transaction solutions in order to remain competitive," Daniel DeMeo, CEO of CAN Capital, said in a press release. "In our partnerships with companies in the payments industry, we've seen firsthand how important it is for both processors and their customers to stay ahead of the curve in terms of new industry technology."

When asked to select the biggest singular threat to their business, respondents chose pricing pressure (29 percent), followed by new technologies (e.g., mobile) (23 percent) and providing additional merchant services (8 percent). 

Regarding their small business customers, most payments professionals (34 percent) identified fees on credit or debit transactions as the biggest challenge faced by small business owners in the area of payments processing. This was followed by limited ability to comply with changing payments security standards (22 percent), limited ability for "brick-and-mortar" shops to implement mobile and e-payment technology (20 percent) and cost of data breaches (16 percent).

Forty-four percent of payments professionals surveyed indicated that mobile shopping was the consumer behavior that has grown the most in popularity during the past 12 months, followed by online shopping (26 percent), usage of mobile banking apps (19 percent) and usage of mobile wallet (11 percent).