Alibaba’s payment arm has bought a minority stake in Klarna as the Swedish FinTech looks to grow its global reach.
Ant Financial Services Group, owner and operator of the world’s leading payments and lifestyle platform Alipay, buying a minority stake will fuel the companies’ ambition to bring 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 buy now, pay later solution across multiple markets.
“For too long consumers have had to endure non-intuitive, boring and overly complex services when shopping both online and offline,” said Sebastian Siemiątkowski (pictured), CEO and co-founder of Klarna.
“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.”
The deal comes as 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.
Klarna’s global revenue jumped by 31% last year.
