An open letter from Jacob de Geer – iZettle to join forces with PayPal

Today is a very big day – for me and for everyone at iZettle. Yesterday we reached an agreement with PayPal to acquire iZettle, the company I co-founded eight years ago and have lived with 24/7 since.

Together with my co-founder, Magnus Nilsson, more than 500 other iZettlers around the world and early backers like Zouk Capital, Index Ventures, 83North, Creandum and Northzone, I’m proud to say we’ve built something amazing. Since 2010 we’ve worked tiredlessly to become what we are today – the leading small business commerce platform in Europe and Latin America offering merchants tools to get paid, sell smarter and grow. But what I’m most proud of is that we make a difference for hundreds of thousands of small businesses around the world – every day.

As you might have heard, we were preparing the company for a potential IPO. But plans sometimes change. Late in the IPO process, PayPal got in touch and showed a serious interest in iZettle. The relationship with PayPal is not a new one, in fact we’ve talked about different ways of working together for years. But this time it very quickly turned into a detailed discussion on how we could benefit from joining forces. And we both realised the great opportunity in doing just that.

Teaming up with another company is no small thing. But during our discussions with PayPal’s President and CEO Dan Schulman and his team, it has become obvious that we share the same belief in the power of small businesses. They create diversity, choice and opportunity in society, but they’re still underserved by the incumbents. Small businesses  deserve something better.

The two companies have complementary product offerings and geographies. PayPal views iZettle’s capabilities and talent as best-in-class and we will work together to scale our reach and geographical footprint. iZettle will become a center of excellence for PayPal’s in-store product and services offerings for small businesses going forward, which I’m really excited about.

Creating a center of excellence in Stockholm with a global reach means a lot to me. Sweden has been a great breeding ground for us and has birthed success stories like Spotify, Skype, Klarna, Mojang and King. I’m proud to add iZettle to Sweden’s impressive list of tech greats.

The global scale and 19 million merchant relationships that PayPal has enables us to move faster and reach further than ever before. Combined with the iZettle brand, capabilities and talent this means we’re ready to level the playing field for small businesses all around the world.

That’s why we’re so excited to join PayPal. We’ll continue to work in much the same way we always have, just as a member of a global family with great expansion opportunities. We’ll continue pursuing our mission of helping small businesses succeed in a world of giants and our teams and culture will remain our key strengths.

By joining the PayPal family we’ll become iZettle with superpowers and jump on a fast track to realise our vision. The opportunity to become part of PayPal was too good to pass up. Not only because of what it means for iZettle and for iZettle’s employees, but because of what we can offer to our merchants.

I couldn’t ask for a more exciting next step for iZettle.

Jacob de Geer
CEO & co-founder, iZettle