LIVE FROM MONEY 2020 EUROPE, COPENHAGEN: Mobile Point of sale (MPoS) vendors are moving upscale because the so-called ‘micro merchants’ associated with the sector do not generate enough revenue, said Jacob de Geer, iZettle CEO and founder.
He pointed to Square, whose figures are available as a publicly quoted company, as evidence as how the market has evolved over the past five years. “We are all moving up the value chain,” said de Geer.
The iZettle founder’s comments are interesting because MPoS is widely associated with such sole traders, at least it was when Square first kicked the market off in 2010.
Micro merchants are generally seen as individual, or occasional, traders generating a small volume of traffic for payment processors.
iZettle’s chief was speaking during a session on MPoS systems, which also featured Konstantin Wolff, founder of Payleven, a rival of iZettle.
Wolff still sees a future for small traders, or at least he’s willing to debate who counts as a small user.
“It depends on how you define micro merchants. We can make a profit with payback in six months. On unit level we can work it out. There is better revenue upmarket but then you move into the territory of incumbents.”
Another myth questioned during the session was what Square did that represented such a breakthrough. It is widely seen as the iconic square-shaped dongle that small traders plugged into their mobile devices but that’s not right, argued Alex Barrotti, CEO and founder of Touchbistro, a food and beverage app.
“Square kicked it off with a card reader, but it’s on boarding that’s the genius, not the device… Letting micro merchants process payments in a couple of days against weeks previously,” asserted Barrotti.
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