SumUp expands to the US market

SumUp, the mobile point of sale (mPOS) startup, has expanded its mobile payments platform to the United States to capitalise on the recent nationwide shift to EMV technology.

The Atlantic expansion continues a very active year for the European company. Earlier this year the company launched several software development kits and a number of APIs for iOS and Android developers in order to allow third parties to connect to its end-to-end platform and card terminals.

At the end of August the company raised €10m in investment through a funding round, pushing its total investment fund up to €50m and then in autumn it expanded to the Scandinavian countries with a launch of its mobile payments service in Sweden.

The expansion into the US meant the company had to introduce a product that catered to all types payment methods as the EMV adoption process has been tarnished by various reports suggesting the country was less prepared than originally thought and that small businesses were more likely to be adversely affected by the costs required to shift to EMV.

SumUp appears to be taking the PayPal approach of covering all bases by introducing an EMV-compliant mPOS device that works with swipe cards; electronic and e-wallet payments via NFC, including Apple Pay and Android Pay; and with EMV chip cards.

Small and relatively cheap readers such as these are becoming very important because of their inherent appeal to small businesses across America. As Christopher Uriarte, chief Strategy & Payments officer at Vesta Corporation, told PaymentEye when PayPal released its reader:

“While large merchants have been preparing for the shift to EMV for years, many small merchants have not had made the transition to EMV a priority.  With the introduction of chip-compatible readers the proliferation of EMV-compatible technologies can quickly reach a larger scale across America without requiring a huge investment by small and medium merchants.”

This was clearly on the mind of SumUp’s CEO Daniel Klein as he says now is the perfect time to expand to the States.

“It’s a perfect time to bring SumUp to the US. The shift to EMV chip cards puts more costly fraud liability on stores without chip terminals — but only half of small businesses are even aware of EMV liability,” he said.

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