For reasons both negative and positive, Visa has found its way into the news for a variety of reasons in recent days. The latest news considering the credit card company may be perceived as negative by some - its European division recently restricted a Swedish provider of mobile payment processing apps from processing transactions made on Visa cards.

According to Finextra, iZettle was officially banned from processing Visa payments in three of the Scandinavian countries that are its primary markets - Denmark, Finland and Norway. Sweden itself, however, has been excluded from the new Visa Europe-mandated policy, which comes into effect on August 1.

The news source reports that Jacob de Geer, CEO of the company, said that he hoped this would be a temporary roadblock in a recent statement.

"We hope we can bring Visa card acceptance back to Denmark, Finland and Norway shortly and will of course keep you posted on the development," de Geer claimed in the announcement, which was posted on the official iZettle website.

As MasterCard has invested in iZettle, this may provide some measure of explanation for Visa Europe's actions, because Visa has invested in U.S.-based business Square, which provides services similar to iZettle's. However, the two firms operate in entirely different geographical markets.

Aside from those located in Sweden, iZettle users will now be restricted to using the product in conjunction with MasterCard - or, if located in Finland, American Express.

An earlier Finextra report stated that iZettle first hit the market in 2011, and that the start-up company's apps have attracted 50,000 users in the Scandinavian market so far. Originally available solely for users of Apple mobile devices such as the iPhone and iPad, the business' partnership with Samsung - announced at the beginning of last week - may bring the application to a much wider audience of Android-powered mobile phone users.