While Klarna enables online merchants to offer the option to pay by invoice to their customers, another payment startup from Sweden focusses on innovative mobile payments. Stockholm-based iZettle provides a mobile payment service that allows businesses and individuals to accept credit and debit card payments using their iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch.

The company was founded in April 2010 by Jacob de Geer and Magnus Nilsson and recently received €8.2 million in funding led by Index Ventures.

Availability

Since its launch in Sweden last summer, iZettle has attracted 25,000 active users and has grown the point of sale market in Sweden by roughly 15%. The service is also available in Denmark, Finland and Norway with more to come in 2012.

How it works

iZettle’s service combines a small card reader and a smartphone application. The card reader, which is attached to the bottom of the device, allows users to take payments from chip-enabled credit or debit cards. The service is compliant with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI-DSS). No sensitive data is stored on the mobile device or the card reader, and all data traffic is encrypted. Unlike Square or PayPal Here iZettle is also EMV (Europay, MasterCard and VISA) approved and supports chip-enabled cards, which are very popular in Europe.

Pricing

iZettle has no set up fee or monthly fee. For each transaction iZettle charges 2.75% of the transaction volume plus €0.15 (including bank fees).

In a nutshell

iZettle provides an innovative solution for accepting credit and debit cards on the go. Unfortunately the service is only available in the Nordics so far.

Check out the video to see how iZettle works: