Intuit’s bid to boost its small-business payments appears to be stumbling.

At the same time, however, Intuit’s experimental labs unit has resurfaced, and with great vigor.

First, to payments. In Intuit’s earnings announcement Tuesday, the company’s president, Brad Smith, said that payments are in flux at the financial software company:

On the Payments front, as we mentioned last quarter, we have shifted our strategic focus to QuickBooks merchants, which supports our ecosystem approach. We improved our payments integration within QuickBooks and simplified our pricing. More than 80 percent of new customers are now selecting our pay-as-you-go pricing model instead of paying a fixed monthly.

More specifically, as indicated in the company’s 10Q for the first quarter of 2014, Intuit’s a shifting focus in payments will continue over “the next few quarters”:

In our payments business we have recently begun focusing resources on core offerings for QuickBooks merchants in support of our small business ecosystem approach. Over the next few quarters we anticipate declining revenue for certain non-QuickBooks payments offerings that may slow overall revenue growth in our payments business.

The result of this uncertainty surrounding payments strategy at Intuit — Intuit wants small businesses to use the company for their payment processing, for example, and presumably instead of Square and others — will continue to have a financial effect on the company. Here’s where it came into play in Intuit’s 1Q financial performance:

Total revenue in our payments offerings was flat for the third quarter of fiscal 2014 and was 3% higher for the first nine months of fiscal 2014 . Growth in QuickBooks merchant revenue was offset by declines in certain non-core payments offerings in the third quarter and first nine months of fiscal 2014 . Total card transaction volume was 4% higher in the first nine months of fiscal 2014 compared with the same period of fiscal 2013 .

This is not to say that Intuit turned in a poor quarter. On the contrary, overall revenue at the company increased to $2.38 billion last quarter, 14% higher than the same quarter in 2013. Net income, meanwhile, climbed 20% t0 $984 million.

Back to the Lab
Underpinning this payments “exploration” is a renewed energy at Intuit Labs, the company’s innovation unit. A little more than a year ago, innovation at Intuit, which counts around 50 million consumers as clients, looked like it hit the dead pool. A unit called the Intuit Collaboratory was shut down. But Intuit Labs, with a team of approximately 24, has resurfaced to take its place, and it is turning out to some dynamic innovation ideas. New “experiments” include a bitcoin payments app, Shop Owner, a POS specifically for salons and hardware stores, and Brainstorm, a idea-management portal for small businesses. Biz Recipes is one intriguing experiment that has already graduated into a live venture. Biz Recipes treats how-to guides for small businesses as, well, recipes. There are “recipes” related to finance, too.

A “recipe” for payments at Intuit? We imagine that might be cooked up soon, too.