SumUp adds a prepaid card to its European business toolkit

London mobile point of sale fintech SumUp has launched a prepaid business Mastercard to its line of small business products.

The card is available in the U.K., Germany, France and Italy, with other countries in the pipeline. The card allows payments on SumUp readers to flow directly to SumUp cards with next-day funds access.

SumUp, which competes with Square and PayPal's iZettle, targets the micro and small merchant segment in Europe with its hand-held card acceptance readers. The SumUp business card recently completed a successful beta testing with a sample of 25,000 merchants from its network. The card has no upfront application fee or annual fee and provides free overseas payments.

The new card represents completion of what SumUp calls a “one stop shop toolkit for small business owners” that begins with merchant card acceptance and flows through spending of processed funds using the card. SumUp has more than 2 million merchants using its terminal acceptance readers with about 5,000 new merchants joining daily. SumUp software and readers allow its target market of micro to small businesses to accept payments cards online or in-person using contactless and Chip and PIN methods.

Last year Mastercard and SumUp reached a collaboration to extend digital payment acceptance to micro, small and medium-sized businesses in 27 countries in Europe.

“This extended partnership brings more innovation to micro, small and medium-sized businesses offering a convenient way for them to pay and be paid using the simple, speedy and secure payment experience they’ve come to expect from Mastercard anywhere in the world,” said Jason Lane, executive vice president of market development Europe at Mastercard, in a press release.

SumUp has raised more than $425 million in funding over nine funding rounds since 2012 according to Crunchbase, a website that tracks investments in private companies. The firm's investors include Bain Capital Credit, Goldman Sachs Private Capital Investing, BBVA Ventures, American Express and Groupon. The funds have been used to expand SumUp’s product mix and geographic coverage as well as acquire a London-based competitor, Payleven, in 2016. In December SumUp acquired multi-channel ecommerce platform Shoplo to expand its online offerings to its merchant clients.

The largest investment came in July when SumUp raised €330 million (about $363 million) to fuel expansion of its product suite, such as the new business card, as well as to fund more acquisitions. SumUp additionally plans to expand its workforce which includes more than 1,500 employees in 15 offices on three continents.