iZettle
Helping a Swedish fintech startup look the part while it invented mobile card payments in Europe.
Swedish startup iZettle is well known for enabling credit card payments. In 2011, when the company was just beginning its journey, I was contacted to help out with the UX and visual design of the public website and the logged‑in version where users can control their payments.
A little black dongle, and a lot of ambition
Back in 2011, taking card payments meant heavy terminals, long contracts and fat monthly fees. iZettle turned a small black square and an iPhone into a complete point‑of‑sale — and they needed a website that could explain that quickly, clearly, and confidently.
I came in to help shape the UX and the visual design of the public marketing site and the logged‑in portal where merchants manage their account. The brief was simple in principle: make it feel solid, safe and inviting — a product a small café owner would trust with their takings at the end of the day.
Hardware on a pedestal
The iZettle reader was the hero of every page. Clean product shots on neutral backgrounds, generous space around them, and a short, direct value proposition — “Ta betalt med kort, i din iPhone eller iPad”.
Finding the right hero
A page that answers every question at once
The “Så fungerar det” (how it works) page had to cover everything in one scroll: who it’s for, card reader or not, social payments, security, and a realistic preview of the transaction dashboard. Tabs up top jumped to the right section.
From sketch to finished page
On the left, the wireframe as it went into the project: boxes where the images would go, “Namn Namnsson” in the seller panel, and a yellow sticky explaining that the thumbnails are clickable. On the right, the same page finished.
How the design was specified
Before the site was coded, sheets like this one went to the front-end developer: a slice of the design with notes in blue about what is a rule and what may vary. Where the image origin sits, that images are saved with an alpha channel, that the text always starts at the same Y while the image width is cut to fit its own content.
Old, but not that old
Looking back at the design now, it all seems quite familiar from today’s websites — but it’s still old. It’s mostly a matter of how you apply drop shadows, which typeface you use, and whether you reach for a border or not. It makes you think about the progress of interactive design, doesn’t it?
Working with the iZettle team was a highlight — listening to their thoughts and ideas, then realising them through design. They went on to become one of Sweden’s most talked‑about fintechs, and were eventually acquired by PayPal in 2018 for around $2.2B.
The one that got away
iZettle was actually my very first client under the Blacktip brand. About a month into the project I was invited to a meeting with founder Jacob De Geer, where he offered me a full‑time position at iZettle.