LONDON: iZettle, the five-year-old Swedish company that makes card readers for smartphones, just closed a €60 million (£43.77 million, $67.3 million) funding round from Intel Capital, Zouk Capital, and Santander’s investment fund InnoVentures.
The series D round — the fourth injection of institutional funding — takes iZettle’s total raised to €147.4 million (£107.5 million, $165.5 million).
The hardware business makes credit and debit card readers that link to smartphones and let small businesses and sole traders accept card payment — a bit like Square in the US.
CEO and co-founder Jacob de Geer told Business Insider earlier this year that “a couple of hundred thousand businesses” across Europe use iZettle and the UK is its fastest growing market.
Alongside the fresh funding round, iZettle is also moving into a completely new area — loans for small businesses.
It’s a type of shadow banking, in that iZettle isn’t a traditional deposit-taking bank subject to things like deposit-guarantees, and capital and liquidity rules. The term can mean a lot of different things but essentially comes down to providing loans and investment services outside of traditional lending banks.
