PayPal's Zettle point-of-sale (POS) solution was recently released in the United States. PayPal purchased iZettle, a European point-of-sale service, in 2018 and renamed it, Zettle. In the United States, Zettle POS machines now take debit and credit cards and Venmo QR codes and are integrated with PayPal's omnichannel commerce payment systems. BigCommerce, SalesVu, WooCommerce, and Lightspeed are also integrated with Zettle US. This partner pick is necessary but not particularly outstanding, in our opinion.

According to ARK's study, Paypal appears to be playing catch-up because competitor Square offers interfaces with all Zettle's partners except Lightspeed, as well as hundreds of other partners in its app store. Shopify, a competitor, has an app marketplace with hundreds of third-party integrations.

For the time being, Zettle's key distinction appears to be its low initial rate. PayPal stated 2.29 percent + $0.09 card processing fees "at launch," with the caveat that fees are subject to change. Square and FISERV's Clover charge 2.7 percent + $0.10 for card transactions, while Stripe Terminal charges 2.7 percent +$0.05 and Shopify charges 2.4 percent -2.9 percent + $0.3. PayPal's pricing is likely to rise over time, despite its weaker product value offer.