SumUp, Another European Square, Expands To 3 More Markets: France, Belgium, Portugal — Now Taking Payments In 10 Markets

SumUp, another Square-style mobile payment dongle that launched in Europe in August backed by more than $20 million from b-to-v Partners, Shortcut Ventures, Tengelmann Ventures and Klaus Hommels, is continuing its rapid rollout by expanding into three more markets to take its total business footprint in Europe to 10 markets.

The three new markets it’s adding are Belgium, France and Portugal. The other seven markets it operates in are its original launch markets of Austria, Ireland, Germany and the UK, plus Holland, Italy and Spain — which it added last month.

SumUp is competing with a plethora of other mobile dongle systems in Europe, including iZettle and Rocket Internet’s Payleven, but the company claims its 10 market-strong European footprint is “more than any other mobile point-of-sale technology provider”. iZettle is currently in seven European markets (Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Spain and the U.K.), while Payleven is operational in six markets — including one outside Europe (Brazil, plus the U.K., Germany, the Netherlands, Poland and Italy).

SumUp also notes its system is capable of processing MasterCard and Visa payments (via a manual workaround) in all the countries in which it operates. iZettle has had problems processing Visa payments in the past, having acceptance suspended for a time, although it can now also accept Visa via a workaround in which users manually enter their card details.

SumUp’s system works with both iOS and Android. Like its rivals, it charges a per transaction fee of 2.75%. While SumUp only launched services this August, it was founded in 2011 and now has more than 130 employees, with “major offices” in Berlin, London, Dublin, Madrid, Milan and Amsterdam.

Earlier this month SumUp signed a partnership with a German taxi hailing app, Taxi.de, in a bid to grow its userbase. Exactly how many users it has at this point is unclear: the startup isn’t breaking out user numbers yet.