Heads up, iZettle: the Samwer brothers’ Square clone Payleven expands to UK, Brazil and more

The Samwer brother’s infamous Rocket Internet ‘startup accelerator’ is certainly moving mighty fast with its recently unveiled Square clone.

First dubbed ZenPay, then EvoPay, and now Payleven, the mobile payments startup is expanding its operations to the United Kingdom, Brazil, The Netherlands and Poland in one fell swoop.

The company also says it plans to launch in more countries ‘soon’. For what it’s worth, they seem to have a website ready for Italy, Spain, and probably others.

Another interesting fact Payleven will be revealing later today: it has secured a “double-digit million euro” funding round from several global VC firms, including New Enterprise Associates, Holtzbrinck Ventures and ru-Net.

Currently, the company says it employs around 70 people in Germany, the UK and other international markets.

Like Square and its European rival, Sweden-based iZettle, Payleven enables merchants to easily and rapidly accept card payments with tablets or smartphones running iOS or Android with an app + card reader.

Square has yet to expand outside of the United States, but they will, and soon enough. iZettle, meanwhile, is available in Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland and the United Kingdom.

Currently, Payleven works with Mastercard and local bank cards in the Netherlands and Germany. The company asserts that accepting VISA and American Express credit cards will be possible with the launch of Chip & PIN devices “in a few weeks”.

Payleven co-founder Dr. Alexander Zumdieck comments on the current status of the business in its home country Germany:

“The first six weeks have been very successful for payleven. We are rapidly approaching round 1,000 partner merchants in our Berlin test market. Now we are expanding this success on a national and international scale.”

As I mentioned earlier, Rocket Internet is one hella fast-moving cloner.

For your background: they’re also cloning Stripe with ‘Paymill’.

Also read:

Millicom closes deal with Rocket Internet to jointly build more clones in Africa, Latin America

Rocket Internet’s China operations set to crash unless it finds new investors

Rocket Internet reportedly exits Turkey despite its fast-growing digital economy; 400 jobs on the line