iZettle – mobile Payment-Service at the Point of Sale

• iZettle provides mobile payment services to retailers and sellers

• Has been inspired by “Square”, which is operating successfully in the United States

• Exclusive ties to Apple’s iPhone and iPad

• Growing number of customers and expansion beyond the Nordic market

• Agreements with MasterCard and VISA

Alternative ways of payment represented one of the key issues of the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. iZettle is one of the few companies in this context which want to capture the market from the suppliers’ side. While other providers of mobile payment services act on the demand side by enabling buyers to use mobile payment, iZettle focusses on the point of sales on the sellers’ side.

Like its direct role model “Square”, which operates successfully on the US-American market, but whose technology is based on the reading of magnetic stripes, iZettle equips retailers with a special device for the purpose of mobile payment. Retailers connect this device to their iTouch device and are thus able to read the credit cards of their customers. Moreover, iZettle provides an app by means of which credit card data can be entered manually to make payments this way. Using the procedure is simple. Retailers simply have to prove that they have a domestic ID card, a domestic current account, and they need an iDevice. Since its go-live, iZettle has developed a client base of 25,000 users in Sweden.

While iZettle has so far only operated on the Swedish market, the company announced at this year’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona that its service is now available in all Nordic markets. Expansion to Great Britain, Germany, Spain and Italy is scheduled to take place by the end of this year.

Despite its short history, the company has a market capitalization of US-$ 100 million. Hardware and software as well as the processes of the company comply with the international standards and guidelines of VISA and MasterCard.

Together with potential new services on the consumers’ side, the service provided by iZettle is another step on the road to comprehensive handling of payments by means of mobile payment without direct involvement of the account-holding institutions.

iZettle

http://www.izettle.com

MasterCard

http://newsroom.mastercard.com/press-releases/mastercard-sets-sights-on-the-next-billion-consumers-as-it-unleashes-the-future-of-mobile-payments-2/

Gigaom

http://gigaom.com/2012/02/26/izettle-launches-across-nordics-next-stop-u-k/

TechCrunch

http://techcrunch.com/2012/02/28/izettle-launches-in-the-nordics-uk-launch-on-the-cards/