An agreement between SumUp and Payleven could signal the start of consolidation in the European mobile Point of Sale (mPoS) market.

Although billed as a merger, SumUp founder Daniel Klein is becoming CEO of the new entity and it will adopt the SumUp brand. Together, the two firms process more than €1 billion annually in 15 markets.

Consolidation among European mPoS providers is unsurprising. “In Europe we discovered that it just takes a lot longer to adopt card payments at this scale than people originally thought it would,” Klein told Techcrunch.

Previously projections were for 25 million small and medium sized busineses using dongles with smartphones and tablets for accepting payments, but in fact there are only about 8 million today, Klein said.

His analysis follows recent remarks made by Jacob de Geer, CEO and founder of iZettle, a leading rival to SumUp and Payleven.  He said mPoS vendors are looking for larger customers because the so-called ‘micro merchants’ associated with the sector do not generate enough revenue.