Strong payment-tech cooperation
Photo: Jon Sprank (previously iZettle, now Werlabs), Cecilie Grindheim (TicketCo BDA), Carl-Erik M. Moberg (TicketCo CSO), Kåre Bottolfsen (TicketCo CEO), Andy Forsyth (iZettle Global Sales Operations Manager) and Natalie Eklund (iZettle Nordic Sales Director).
A random encounter between TicketCo and iZettle at a tradeshow in 2014 started what has proved to be a very strong cooperation between the two Scandinavian payment-tech companies.
You may have heard that iZettle recently was sold to PayPal for 2,2 billion USD? The acquisition made founder Jacob de Geer a billionaire, but others benefitted as well. Among these the Norwegian venture capital fund Northzone, who made around 90 million USD on their investment in the Swedish game-changing payment provider.
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Scandinavian cooperation
Northzone’s great profit was the top story in the Norwegian business paper Dagens Næringsliv June 1st, where TicketCo CEO Kåre Bottolfsen – (due to the established collaboration between iZettle and TicketCo) – was asked if the iZettle takeover will have any impact on TicketCo.
“Maybe not in the short term, but this deal sure is strengthening our chances to succeed globally,” says Bottolfsen as an addition to his statements in Dagens Næringsliv.
He was among the initiators when iZettle and TicketCo teamed up in 2014, and has since then received multiple confirmations that the Scandinavian cooperation has benefited both parties.
Event payments made easy
TicketCo was established as a simple self-service ticketing solution in Norway a few years back. Driven by a firm belief that all kinds of event payments should be easy to handle by both organisers and their vast audience, Bottolfsen and his co-founders have since developed what is likely to be the first global standard for all event payments.
“Our business idea is simply to make event payments easy, and in order to achieve this we have built a unique unified platform for efficient event payments. Since 2014 iZettle has been a vital, integrated part of this platform, enabling Norwegian organisers to handle all their sales and any kind of payments within one system. Now we want to make TicketCo global,” says the TicketCo CEO.
iZettle terminals for free
All new TicketCo clients receive an iZettle terminal for free, and this allows them to offer card payments through TicketCo.
“In addition to integrating technologies, our partnership is structured so that iZettle – (when processing payments for our clients) – will forward these to TicketCo. We will then merge these transactions with sales made online through our own platform, then present one complete report and one comprehensive settlement to our customers. This drastically reduces the organisers’ book keeping, and secures that they have one source only for all types of sale. This source is of course TicketCo,” Bottolfsen states.
To summerise, this means that iZettle and TicketCo make a great complementary pair growing each other’s businesses.
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One click payments
“We are tailoring payment flows to the event organisers needs, focusing on all types of sale – such as ticketing, food & beverages, merchandise and likewise. The organisers all have their own specific needs and demands, just like retail stores have. The iZettle tech is primarily developed towards retail and restaurants, whereas the TicketCo software is designed for the event industry – such as sports and festivals,” says Bottolfsen.
This gives two options.
“If we focus on the card payment, then TicketCo is the software the terminal is connected to,” he explains.
“If we look at it the other way around, the iZettle terminal is one amongst many channels in the TicketCo sphere where people can make payments. Our organisers can sell their products online (on desktop or mobile) or at the counter (point of sales). Since they’re able to operate their iZettle terminals from their mobile phones through our organiser app, they also have the liberty to make counter sales pretty much everywhere. In addition to this, we will soon launch TicketCo Wallet. This is an app developed for the event audience, and it will allow them to do one click payments, store tickets and receipts – and to use our Cashless technology,” Bottolfsen finishes.