iZettle, a mobile payments startup based out of Sweden that has been referred to as the “Square of Europe” for its payment system that used a small piece of hardware attached to a mobile device, is today taking one more step to making its service more ubiquitous in the nine countries where it operates: it’s releasing an SDK that will directly integrate iZettle mobile payments into third party applications. It’s doing so ahead of U.S. counterparts like Square and PayPal — although the latter is expected to be releasing one sometime this quarter, and has already been testing it out with at notable partners like Uber. Tellingly, iZettle cites a car service company also as a reference customer for its SDK. “iZettle’s payment feature has become a central aspect of our application,” Zeryab Cheema, founder & CEO of Taxi 24/7 and iView Inc, said in a statement. “Customers increasingly use our app to book their journeys and the recent addition of a payment option thanks to the iZettle SDK has really helped boost customer satisfaction and repeat business.” The SDK is an expansion of the API that iZettle launched last year. That also integrated an iZettle payment option into third party apps, but when a customer used it, clicking on the “pay” button triggered the iZettle app to open. Now the experience will remain in the original app — something that will create a better user experience and be significantly more attractive to the merchants using it. While iZettle very much got its start directly targeting merchants who were too small to make accepting credit card payments financially viable (because of charges from banks and the card companies), it’s increasingly been working with others to reach those small merchants and those that are bigger — a sign of how payments processed through a mobile app and dongle are becoming ever more accepted by the mainstream. That has involved taking a $6.6 million round of funding from Banco Santander to expand into new markets (it has raised over $50 million to date from investors that also include Index, Grelock, MasterCard and American Express). And also working with point-of-sale hardware providers. The SDK will help iZettle integrate better with this latter group. “In our ongoing quest to democratise card payments we’re now opening our platform to developers who already have an app, or are working on the next blockbuster iOS app, and need a
Reported by TechCrunch 16 hours ago.
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