Mobile point of sale (MPOS) startup SumUp has sealed funding in the double-digit millions of dollars. The round – which comes a year after a similarly-sized Series B – has been led by fintech specialist VC Life.SREDA, with existing investors such as Groupon and BBVA Ventures and other VCs also contributing.
The money will be used to develop the company’s end-to-end payment solution which includes a certified payments gateway, proprietary hardware and operations systems. In addition, the funding will go towards boosting the international growth of SumUp’s Chip & PIN card terminal called PIN+, which was launched in May.
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.
The MPOS market is certainly a competitive one, with a number of players jostling for position in Europe alongside SumUp, including Payleven, iZettle and Adyen, while Stripe and I Love Velvet are amongst the market leaders in the US.,
Hence the rapid return to the investment table for SumUp, which needs all the resources it can find to win the battle for market share. CEO Daniel Klein said: “We are excited to bring on a new investor that has a deep knowledge of the global fintech space. Life.SREDA is building an eco-system of companies disrupting a wide range of financial services and products.”
Alex Ivanov, CFO of Life.SREDA, said: “No other MPOS player in the world has focused so much on disrupting the actual technology behind the revolutionary MPOS business model. We are impressed by SumUp’s end-to-end payments capabilities, especially their recently launched proprietary Chip & PIN terminal. SumUp is a great addition to our portfolio and we can’t wait to support SumUp in their efforts to build value added services on top of their existing offering.”
In addition to the funding round, SumUp – which is based in London and Berlin – announced that CPO Stefan Jeschonnek and CCO Dr. Jan Deepen, who founded the company with Klein and Marc-Alexander Christ in 2012, are stepping down from their executive roles, although they will remain shareholders.