iZettle's Nordic Launch Starts Tomorrow, Offers 5000 Devices Per Country

iZettle has announced that they will begin their Nordic launch tomorrow, and will be releasing 5000 devices in Denmark, Norway, and Finland, each, for beta testing. If you haven’t seen our previous coverage, iZettle’s iPhone and iPad app lets anyone take credit or debit card payments on the go, with or without iZettle’s chip-card reader.

The company offers a service similar to the US-based competitor, Square, although Square is built for magnetic strip cards and plugs into the headphone jack. The device has already been beta testing in Sweden since November, a month after the company raised €8.2M in venture funding. We’ve already gotten our hands on the device, and will be releasing a more detailed review later this week.

Unlike traditional point of sale card terminals that accept payments, with iZettle there is no set up fee or monthly fee or minimum payment. Instead, each transaction using iZettle is charged 2.75% of the sale plus €0.15. The service moves money around quickly; following the transactions, iZettle electronically deposits payments in the seller’s bank account the next business day.

The no upfront costs makes it great way to accept payments for small businesses and in-home service providers, such as housekeepers, plumbers, gardeners, carpenters or repair people. But it’s also designed to be used outside of a business setting– individuals can use it to settle restaurant bills or yard-sale purchases by neighbours, without having to run to the ATM.

Jacob de Geer, CEO and co-founder of iZettle tells us that, “Roughly six months after launch we have 25 000 active registered users in Sweden. This means we have increased the Swedish POS (point of sale/cardterminal) market with 15 per cent in six months. We have slightly more private persons than businesses as users but the business are more regular users of the service.”

To get started, a user must go to iTunes App Store to download and install the iZettle iPhone or iPad app. Once the app has downloaded you begin the setup process by opening the application. The first 5000 users in each country will also receive the card reader device for free (however you don’t need the card reader to start taking payments as you can simply enter the card information to take payments).