Tag: small business mobile payments

The latest addition to the company’s availability is in Spain, raising its number of E.U. countries to seven.

The increasingly popular mobile payments startup from Sweden, iZettle, has just announced that it is taking its first steps into Spain, which has boosted its availability in the European Union to include seven different countries.

The service provides small businesses with a way to receive credit card transactions over smartphones.

The company is already offering mobile payments options to small businesses in the United Kingdom, Sweden, and Germany. It has also brought Visa transactions to Finland, Norway, and Denmark as of November 2012. They were able to accomplish this goal following the settlement of an issue between the two companies that had been outstanding.

The mobile payments will be expanding to Spain with an eye on small and struggling businesses.

The expansion into Spain is meant to provide small business owners who “are hurting” with new mobile payments options, said an mcommerce news release by the company. At the moment, there is no subscription fee for the company’s services and there is no minimum monthly fee. Instead, it charges a flat 2.75 percent per transaction.

The service works for either Android or iOS devices, and the mobile payments are compatible with all of the major credit cards including Amex, Visa, and MasterCard. This places iZettle in direct competition with a number of other companies that are offering comparable services within the European small business marketplace.

For example, there is a German startup called Payleven that is providing mobile payments services for Germany, Spain, Poland, Italy, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom. Another example is Elavon, which is also headquartered in Europe and has just recently expanded into Ireland as of October, after being active exclusively in the United Kingdom until then.

Among the most recent mobile payments companies to make its way into the European marketplace is a company from Holland called Adyen. It is similar to iZettle in that it functions on both iOS and Android, but it is designed for large retailers so that they can make a point of sale in any location that there is an employee, in order to reduce lineups at the checkout counters.

SumUp looks to engage businesses in the UK

SumUp, a mobile payments startup based in the United Kingdom, has been working to help promote mobile commerce within Great Britain and Ireland. In August of this year, SumUp raised more than $20 million for its efforts. Now, the company is looking to put that money to good use and believes that Diffusion, a PR and social media communications agency. Together, the two plan to help boost the adoption of mobile commerce throughout the UK by focusing on businesses within the country.

Diffusion to handle social media efforts and traditional marketing for Sum Up

Diffusion will be handling SumUp’s social media efforts and will be operating traditional marketing campaigns, which will be targeted at businesses that have shown interest in mobile commerce in some way. Diffusion notes that there may be a serious opportunity for growth in the UK and Irish markets, claiming that the number of people with smart phones in these regions is on the rise. Businesses throughout the UK are beginning to feel the pressure to be more accommodating to consumers that want to make purchases using their mobile devices, thus creating more opportunity for SumUp.

Card reader could be a big hit with businesses

SumUp has developed a card reader that can be connected to smart phones and facilitate mobile payments. SumUp believes that the card reader could be a boon for small businesses who see traditional point of sale terminals as expensive investments. The card reader would enable these businesses to process purchases made using a credit card using a simple mobile device rather than a static payment terminal.

Growth of mobile commerce presents powerful opportunity for SumUp

SumUp has chosen Diffusion for this initiative because the agency has extensive experience in the various markets within the UK. Mobile commerce is on the rise throughout the country, and SumUp is keen to establish powerful ties to companies that can help it reach a new generation of mobile consumer. The company will have to face down some strong competition coming from Square, Orange, and even Google, if it wants to find success in this expanding industry.