Klarna

Sebastian Siemiatkowski, Niklas Adalberth and Victor Jacobsson pitched the idea at the Stockholm School of Economics' entrepreneurship competition in 2005 and finished near the bottom; they founded Kreditor Europe AB the same year anyway. The offer was simple: the online retailer hands the customer over to Klarna at checkout, Klarna pays the shop and then collects from the customer by invoice, instalments or direct payment. The shop is rid of the credit risk, and anyone unwilling to give a card number to an unknown web shop can buy anyway. The Klarna name arrived in 2009.

The company bought Germany's Sofort in 2014, obtained a banking licence in 2017 and during the pandemic was Europe's most valuable private tech company, at 45.6 billion dollars in 2021; a year later it was 6.7 billion. Criticism has followed all the way: "buy now, pay later" marketed to the young, and Swedish rules from 2020 that forbid showing credit options ahead of direct payment at checkout. The New York IPO came in September 2025 at a valuation of around 15 billion dollars.