Klarna started in 2005 with a simple promise: get the goods first, pay afterward. Three young founders in Stockholm called it Kreditor, taking the credit and fraud risk off merchants' hands. Two decades later the Swedish company served about 111 million shoppers and 790,000 merchants in 26 countries. It had also become a loud voice on AI, saying an assistant did the work of 700 customer service agents. In September 2025 it finally went public in New York.

From Kreditor to Klarna

Sebastian Siemiatkowski, Niklas Adalberth and Victor Jacobsson founded the company in Stockholm with help from the Stockholm School of Economics' business incubator. Angel investor Jane Walerud offered SEK 600,000 for 10 percent early on. The name changed to Klarna in 2009. The bet was that shoppers would buy more if they could pay later, and that merchants would pay Klarna for the extra sales. It grew into a shopping app, a card and a bank.

Forty Dollars a Share

Klarna priced 34.3 million shares at $40 and began trading on the New York Stock Exchange as KLAR on September 10, 2025. Klarna itself sold 5 million of them, and existing shareholders sold the rest. Siemiatkowski, still chief executive, kept special high-vote shares. By 2026 Klarna reported more than 119 million active consumers and more than one million merchants. It still trades on the NYSE.

Cover: The Milliner, Félix Edouard Vallotton. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for a hat shop counter (shopping, buy now, pay later).