Klarna

Klarna
Industry Finance
Founded 2005 (2005)
Founder Sebastian Siemiatkowski, Niklas Adalberth, Victor Jacobsson
Headquarters Stockholm, Sweden
Number of locations
 14
Area served
 Sweden, Finland, Norway, Denmark, Germany, Austria, Netherlands, Switzerland, Belgium, UK, Italy, Spain, Poland, and US.
Key people
 Sebastian Siemiatkowski (CEO)
Michael Moritz (Board member)
Revenue 530 million USD (2017)
Number of employees
 Approx. 2000 (May 2018)
Website www.klarna.com

Klarna Bank AB, commonly referred to as Klarna, is a Swedish bank that provides online financial services such as payment solutions for online storefronts, debt collection, credit payments and more. Their core service is to assume stores' claims for payments and handle customer payments, thus eliminating the risk for seller and buyer. About 40% of all e-commerce sales in Sweden goes through Klarna.[1] The company has more than 2000 employees, most of them working at the headquarters in Stockholm. In 2017, the company handled about $21 billion in online sales.[2]

History

The three founders Sebastian Siemiatkowski, Niklas Adalberth and Victor Jacobsson participated in the Stockholm School of Economics annual entrepreneurship award in 2005 with their idea on how to provide consumers and merchants with safer and simpler online shopping payment methods. However, their idea was not received with enthusiasm and their entry was among the last in the competition. Despite this, they decided to found Klarna in the middle of 2005 and started operations in Sweden.[3] An angel investor and previous Erlang Systems sales manager, Jane Walerud, invested in their company and put them in contact with a team of programmers to help them build their platform.[4]

In the end of 2007, venture capital firm Investment AB Öresund invested in the company. Three years later, Klarna started selling their services in Norway, Finland and Denmark.

Klarna also started providing services in Germany and the Netherlands in 2010, and in May the same year, San Francisco-based Sequoia Capital entered as investors. During 2010, Klarna increased their revenues by over 80% to $54M (~400M SEK).[5] In the early 2011, the British newspaper The Telegraph listed Klarna as one of Europe's 100 most promising young tech companies.[6]

In 2011, growth equity firm General Atlantic led a $155M investment round joined by DST Global, and General Atlantic's managing director Anton Levy joined the board of directors.[7][8] In May 2011, Klarna acquired Israeli company Analyzd, with business activity on markets in Europe, Israel and the United States. Analyzd specialise in risk management and online payments, and its founders previously worked for PayPal.[5]

Klarna began offering services in Austria in 2012, and in 2013, Klarna and German SOFORT AG merged after Klarna acquired SOFORT Banking from the majority shareholder Reimann Investors, becoming Klarna Group. Both companies would continue to offer their products side by side and operate on a stand-alone basis.

In 2018, Klarna had more than 60M users and some 90,000 online merchants have so far hired it to run their checkouts[9]. Klarna launched in the United States in September 2015, and the US has become its principal focus for future growth.[2][10] That year, Minister of Enterprise and Innovation Mikael Damberg dubbed Klarna one of Sweden's "five unicorns," by which he meant startup companies that had succeeded in growing and attract international investments. The other four companies were Spotify, Mojang, Skype and King.[11]

As of 2016, Klarna is valued at over €2 billion.[12] At Money20/20 Europe held in Copenhagen in April 2016, co-founder and CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski told Sequoia Capital partner Mike Moritz that he had no plans to take the company public.[13]

Technology

Parts of Klarna's code base is written in Erlang, a programming language designed by Ericsson designed for highly parallel, scalable applications.[14]

References

  1. ↑ http://www.hui.se/web/E-barometern.aspx
  2. 1 2 "Klarna annual report 2017" (PDF). Klarna. 6 February 2018. Retrieved 8 February 2016.
  3. ↑ "The story of how a complete coincidence led to the creation of the $2 billion fintech startup Klarna". nordic.businessinsider.com. Retrieved 2016-12-18.
  4. ↑ "Interview: from Burger King to boardroom, how Klarna became". www.whiteboardmag.com. Retrieved 2016-12-18.
  5. 1 2 "Klarna acquires Analyzd to tie social to finance and payments". TechCrunch. AOL. 4 May 2011. Retrieved 8 April 2016.
  6. ↑ "Start-Up 100: A-Z". Telegraph.co.uk. 5 April 2011. Retrieved 8 April 2016.
  7. ↑ Schonfeld, Erick. "European Payment Service Klarna Raises A Whopping $155 Million From DST And General Atlantic". TechCrunch. Retrieved 16 December 2015.
  8. ↑ "Klarna Closes $155 Million Financing to Accelerate Global Expansion". General Atlantic website. Retrieved 16 December 2015.
  9. ↑ "Klarna Statistics - Klarna UK". Klarna UK. Retrieved 2018-07-25.
  10. ↑ "Klarna – About Us". Klarna. Retrieved 2016-03-15.
  11. ↑ Olsson Jeffery, Miriam (24 April 2015). "Damberg om Sveriges fem enhörningar" [Damberg about Sweden's five unicorns]. www.svd.se. Svenska Dagbladet. Retrieved 15 April 2016.
  12. ↑ "Klarna is valued at 2 billion euros". Ecommerce News. Retrieved 2016-04-12.
  13. ↑ Gill, Sarah (April 5, 2016). "5 things we heard about payments at Money2020". PaymentEye. Retrieved May 4, 2016.
  14. ↑ "Klarna Engineering Insights". Klarna Engineering. Retrieved 8 April 2016.

Further reading

  • "Swedish payments firm Klarna shifts focus to U.S. as revenues swell". Reuters.
  • "Fast-growing Klarna expanding its role easing e-commerce". The Columbus Dispatch.
  • "How Klarna got investment from Sequoia Capital – Business Insider". Business Insider.
  • "Klarna, A Unicorn, Is Coming To The U.S. And Going After U.S. Credit Card Companies". TechCrunch.
  • "Klarna acquires Analyzd to tie social to finance and payments". TechCrunch. 4 May 2011.
  • "Making online shopping easier". Nordstjernan.
  • "Klarna annual report 2017" (PDF). Klarna.
  • "Klarna official statistics". Klarna.
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