In recent times there has been plenty of movement in the crowded and competitive mobile point of sale (MPOS) market – a number of players are jostling for position, especially in Europe, including Payleven, Adyen and SumUp, while in the US there is Stripe and I Love Velvet. The other big player is iZettle, a Swedish-based company which is looking to make big strides with a C Series round announced in May.
That round is now worth €45 million after Berlin’s Hasso Plattner Ventures (HPV) became the latest participating VC with €5 million in extra funding.
The idea of MPOS is to turn smartphones and tablets into credit and debit card terminals. The complexity and cost of a traditional terminal is off-putting especially to small businesses, something the MPOS companies are trying to change. Most of them offer a similar service – a small device which can be attached to the phone or tablet that reads the card and approves the sale, which can be carried out via an app with merchants just paying a percentage of each transaction.
Founded four years ago, iZettle claims to be the oldest such platform, and concentrates on offering small businesses a range of services from complete point of sale solutions to free sales overview apps providing reports and graphs to spot sales opportunities and identify loyal customers.
Overseen by Sweden’s Financial Supervisory Authority, iZettle is approved for EMV (Europay, MasterCard and Visa) and is available in the UK, Spain, Germany, Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Finland, as well as Mexico and Brazil.
The Series C is being led by London-based growth investor Zouk Capital, with Dawn Capital and Intel Capital also participating alongside previous Series A and B investors Greylock Partners, Index Ventures, Northzone and the Nordic financial services group SEB.
HPV partner Shmuel Chafets said: “There is no question that iZettle is already an international leader in mobile payments, and has the vision and viable business model to change an essential piece of the financial services industry.”
In a release, iZettle said it will use the new funds to pursue growth in existing markets and to expand services into more countries. Jacob de Geer, iZettle co-founder and CEO, said: “The additional capital gives us the extra runway to ensure we can financially execute on our business plan and the experience and know-how they [HPV] bring is guaranteed to be invaluable.”