Swedish payment startup Klarna has announced a $460 million equity funding round, as it sets its sights firmly on an expansion into the United States.
The Stockholm disruptor, now valued at $5.5bn, becomes Europe’s largest private fintech firm. But Klarna, founded by a trio of entrepreneurs in 2005, is seeking its next challenge across the Atlantic. It is already growing its U.S. customer base at a rate of 6m annually, and has secured more than 3,000 U.S. merchants as clients. The latest bumper round, led by San Francisco-based Dragoneer Investment Group, will help kickstart the push.
Klarna hopes to capitalize on customers turning away from traditional credit card providers—and has diversified its offering with features such as a shopping app, which it claims outstrips downloads of similar products at a rate of three-to-one.
“This is a decisive time in the history of retail banking,” said Klarna co-founder and CEO Sebastien Siemiatkowski. “Finally, transparency, technology and creativity will serve the consumer, and there will be no more room for unimaginative products, non-transparent terms of use or lack of genuine care of ones customers.”
Klarna, one of Sweden’s biggest tech successes, now serves over 60m consumers, and counts 130,000-plus merchants as partners. It will soon surpass $1bn in yearly revenue, as the global fintech market accelerates towards a 2023 projection of $305.7bn, according to anaylst ResearchAndMarkets.