Visa, startup iZettle settle mobile payments issue

As of Tuesday, iZettle is out of beta and commercially available for individuals and businesses in Denmark, Finland and Norway. Interested merchants can download the iZettle app to their Android or iOS devices for free and can buy a card reader for 24 euros (US$30) with a voucher toward iZettle transaction fees of the same amount, the company said. iZettle charges 2.75% of all payments made.

iZettle officially launched in Sweden a year ago, and in Germany and the U.K. in the past few weeks. The company is planning to expand in Europe as well as outside of Europe, Douglas said. In the European market the company competes with similar mobile payments startups like Payleven, based in Germany, and Elavon, a company that is active in the U.K. and Ireland.

A similar service is offered in the U.S. by Square. iZettle is not planning to operate in the U.S. because that is a magstripe market, and iZettle focuses on EMV (Europay, MasterCard and Visa) based chip cards, said Douglas. "And as far as we now, there's a big player there already," she added.

Loek is Amsterdam Correspondent and covers online privacy, intellectual property, open-source and online payment issues for the IDG News Service. Follow him on Twitter at @loekessers or email tips and comments to loek_essers@idg.com