"A lot of people prefer to pay by card these days," says Samy, who sells issues a week of the popular Amsterdam street newspaper Z!

Samy, who buys Z! from the publisher for €1.10 and sells it on the street for €2, was one of the Dutch entrepreneurs and small businesses that participated in testing iZettle before the commercial launch today.

"Customers were super surprised when I told them I'd be happy to take their card instead of cash," said Samy. "It definitely improved my sales."

The news of iZettle's launch in the Netherlands comes hot on the heels of a huge marketing push where iZettle partnered with well-respected advertising firm Forsman & Bodenfors to produce a 'big things start small' campaign, inspiring small businesses to think like their global competitors.

"The Netherlands is known for being incredibly progressive and as a result is becoming an increasingly cashless society," says Jacob de Geer, iZettle CEO and co-founder. "We want to help small businesses embrace this change and prevent them from losing sales on a daily basis.

"We give entrepreneurs and small businesses a little black box that fits perfectly in their pocket and allows them to connect with a smartphone and accept secure cash and card payments in minutes. It's definitely the easiest way to capture sales that would have otherwise been lost."

In addition to the Netherlands, iZettle's app, card readers and free business management software are also available in the U.K., Spain, Germany, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Mexico and Brazil.

iZettle, which processed over €648 million in transactions last year, was the first in Europe three years ago to offer an easy way to take chip card payments using mini card readers that transform smartphones and tablets into cash registers. Today, small businesses come to iZettle for tools to grow their business: from complete point of sale solutions, to free sales overview apps for reports and graphs to spot sales opportunities and identify loyal customers.

iZettle takes just minutes to set up and works with all major payment cards. With iZettle there's no subscription, set up fee, monthly fee or minimum. Instead, iZettle merchants pay a small percentage of each transaction. iZettle then electronically deposits payments in the seller's bank account.

Sweden's Financial Supervisory Authority regulates iZettle, whose services are EMV (Europay, MasterCard and Visa) approved and compliant with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS).