Klarna
 |
|
| Industry | Finance |
|---|---|
| Founded | 2005 |
| Founder | Sebastian Siemiatkowski, Niklas Adalberth, Victor Jacobsson |
| Headquarters | , Sweden |
|
Number of locations
|
11 |
|
Area served
|
Sweden, Finland, Norway, Denmark, Germany, Austria, Netherlands, Switzerland, Belgium, France, UK, Italy, Spain, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, Czech Republic and US. |
|
Key people
|
Sebastian Siemiatkowski (CEO) Michael Moritz (Board member) |
| Revenue | 319.4 million USD (2014) |
|
Number of employees
|
Approx. 1400 (March 2016) |
| Website | www |
Klarna is a Swedish e-commerce company that provides payment services for online storefronts. 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. The company has more than 1400 employees, most of them working at the headquarters in . In 2014, the company handled about $10 billion in online sales.
The three founders Sebastian Siemiatkowski, Niklas Adalberth and Victor Jacobsson participated in the 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. 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.
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). In the early 2011, the British newspaper The Telegraph listed Klarna as one of Europe's 100 most promising young tech companies.
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. 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.
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. Both companies would continue to offer their products side by side and operate on a stand-alone basis.
...
Wikipedia