Alipay has taken a minority stake in Klarna

Klarna, a  leading global payments and shopping provider announced that Ant Financial Services Group, owner and operator of the world’s leading payments and lifestyle platform Alipay, has taken a minority stake in Klarna, as the two companies deepen their partnership to bring more innovative and convenient financial services to consumers worldwide.

This investment in Klarna by Ant Financial, the payment affiliate of Alibaba Group, supports the further development of their strategic cooperation, bringing more of Klarna’s innovative solutions to consumers and merchants within the broader Alibaba ecosystem. It will deepen ongoing collaborations between Klarna and Alipay, which currently enables shoppers at AliExpress, the global retail online marketplace of Alibaba Group, to use Klarna’s popular ‘Pay later’ solution across multiple markets. 

Sebastian Siemiątkowski, CEO at Klarna, says: “For too long consumers have had to endure non-intuitive, boring and overly complex services when shopping both online and offline. At the heart of this cooperation between Klarna and Alipay is a shared ambition of innovating truly superior shopping experiences and creating destinations of inspiration for consumers across the world. Alipay, and the wider Alibaba Group, have truly set the global pace on retail innovation and the app economy. We are delighted in this confidence shown in Klarna in defining the future of payments and shopping and are very much looking forward to working together further in the future.”

Klarna is now powering over 200,000 retailers and e-commerce platforms globally including AliExpress, H&M, ASOS, Expedia Group, IKEA, Farfetch, Adidas, Spotify, Samsung and Nike.

In 2019, Klarna added over 75,000 new merchants and as a strategic growth partner is driving millions of referrals and traffic each month from owned channels to these retailers, as consumers are actively seeking where they can shop with Klarna. Equally, Klarna now has an 85 million strong consumer base who choose to shop with Klarna as loyalty and preference grows across touchpoints – online and instore.

The recently launched shopping experience in the Klarna app allows US consumers to shop with Klarna anywhere online. The number of app downloads has increased by 33x since May, and new features gain instant traction – over two million items were added to consumer wishlists in the first months.

Klarna now has more than 200,000 more monthly app downloads than the nearest US competitor. During 2020, the company will continue to gain strong momentum on current markets as well as enter new markets, with an already strong start to the year with the recent successful launch of the Klarna app in Australia.

Klarna is the most highly valued fintech in Europe with a valuation of $5.5bn and one of the largest private fintechs globally. Klarna was founded in 2005, has over 2,700 employees and is active in 17 countries.

The company has been backed by Sequoia Capital since 2010 and more recently, Dragonner, Bestseller Group, Permira, Commonwealth Bank of Australia, Blackrock holdings and Visa.