iZettle Grabs $47M Additional Funding, Eyes Market Expansion

iZettle has grabbed €40 million in funding (the equivalent of $47 million) that the Stockholm-based payments firm will use to expand into new markets.

TechCrunch reports that the company, which competes against Square and PayPal among others, will look to boost presence beyond the dozen markets it focuses on in arenas as far-flung as Latin America and Europe.  The strategic intent was disclosed by Jacob de Geer, CEO and co-founder, in an interview with TechCrunch. He told the site that eastern and central Europe remain targeted markets.

The latest funding found was spearheaded by Dawn Capital, which had invested in iZettle in the past — and a new investor includes the Fourth Swedish National Pension Fund among other investors that were not named as of Wednesday.  Addressing the latest funding news, de Geer said that “what you see right now is a proof point that the company is doing exceptionally well.  In the last couple of months, we’ve had significant growth that led to taking the decision to accelerate the business.”

Discussing specific markets, the CEO said, “It’s interesting to see how Poland, for example, is very well advanced in contactless payments…it’s a big market and very mature.” Other growth areas include the U.K.  Growth is coming, he noted, from commercial and business platforms that help cross-selling efforts amid SMB customers.  Services beyond payments include invoicing and cash advances.  The company is also examining how it can use deep learning to boost offerings in data and analytics.

The executive did not give any updates to valuation — which, at last reporting, was about half a billon Euros — but did say that the latest capital raise was “absolutely an upround…we tend to have an internal saying that the valuation of the company is the sum of all the problems that we solved, and we’ve solved millions of those, so the valuation should be in line with that.”  Revenues at the company were up 60 percent year on year.