Wallets/zettle
Zettle
0 standards supported
Overview
Zettle (formerly iZettle; branded Zettle by PayPal) is a Stockholm-born mobile-POS / card-acquiring fintech for small merchants, now a PayPal-owned product line [1, se-cro]. Often called "the Square of Europe", it pioneered the chip-card reader paired with a smartphone model in the Nordics and across Europe + Latin America.
PayPal acquired iZettle in 2018 for ~$2.2B and rebranded it Zettle by PayPal in 2020, integrating it into PayPal's omnichannel merchant offering.
History
2010 — iZettle founded in Stockholm by Jacob de Geer + Magnus Nilsson to bring secure chip-card acceptance to small merchants via a smartphone-connected reader [2].
2011-2017 — European + Latin American expansion (UK, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Nordics, Brazil, Mexico).
2018 — PayPal acquires iZettle for ~$2.2B [2], its largest acquisition at the time.
2020 — Rebrand to "Zettle by PayPal"; deeper integration with PayPal merchant services and Tap to Pay rollout.
Ownership & operator
Operating entity: iZettle AB, operating as Zettle by PayPal.
Parent: PayPal Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ: PYPL) since the 2018 acquisition.
Founders: Jacob de Geer + Magnus Nilsson.
Regulators: Finansinspektionen (Sweden) + FCA (UK) + per-country EU regulators.
Technical integration
| Layer | Description |
|---|---|
| Channels | Card readers (Reader 2, Terminal) + Tap to Pay on iPhone/Android + online checkout + PayPal integration |
| Identifiers | Card (chip + contactless) + NFC wallets + PayPal account |
| Hardware | Bluetooth Reader 2 (reader-plus-phone) + standalone Zettle Terminal |
| Merchant focus | Small merchants + retail + hospitality |
| Stack | Card acceptance + POS app + inventory + PayPal payouts |
Implementations & partners
Operator: iZettle AB (Zettle by PayPal); Parent: PayPal Holdings.
Card networks: Visa, Mastercard, Amex + NFC wallets (Apple Pay / Google Pay) + PayPal.
Competitors: [[square]] (Block Inc.), [[sumup]], [[yoco]], plus bank mPOS products.
Regulators: Finansinspektionen + FCA + per-country EU.
Status
Active, PayPal's European SMB mobile-POS arm [1, 2]:
- Zettle by PayPal brand since 2020.
- PayPal-owned since 2018 (~$2.2B acquisition).
- Card readers + Tap to Pay + POS app + PayPal payouts.
- Finansinspektionen + FCA + per-country EU regulated.
Sources
- 1 Zettle by PayPal — official
- 2 iZettle — Wikipedia
- se-cro In-corpus: see SE country report
Source
Biography extracted from zettle.md. See matrix.md for standards-support matrix if present.