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The
company, which has expanded in Europe and gained a 10 percent
share of the Northern European e-commerce market, said it had
partnered with around 10 U.S. merchants so far.
Sweden-based Klarna, founded in 2005 and backed by investors
such as Sequoia Capital and Atomico, is now planning for rapid
expansion in the United States, where it will take on rivals
such as PayPal and Stripe.
"I would be disappointed if we didn't have hundreds of merchants
on the platform doing millions of transactions as early as in
2016," Klarna North America CEO Brian Billingsley, told Reuters.
Klarna's services allow online consumers to buy goods by
entering easy-to-remember details such as an e-mail address and
zip code. It also lets consumers pay after delivery with Klarna
assuming the risk in the interim and paying the retailer
immediately.
Klarna, which had net sales of $319 million last year, said it
was currently seeing "significant growth" in its core markets in
the Nordics and Germany.
Asked how much the group could grow in 2016, Klarna CEO
Sebastian Siemiatkowski said it was to early to tell as the U.S
business was still in its infancy.
"There is definitely a potential to quickly reach half a billion
dollars in revenue in a very short period of time," he said.
Klarna said the company would double in size if it was to
capture half a percentage of the U.S market.
"And while of course our ambitions are much higher than half a
percentage, it is definitely an interesting reflection of how
extremely big the market is," Siemiatkowski said.
The company was valued at $2.25 billion in a recent transaction,
according to Swedish tech news outlet Breakit. Its services are
used by more than 50,000 retailers and transaction volumes
processed by the company rose 150 percent last year.
($1 = 8.4325 Swedish crowns)
(Reporting by Johannes Hellstrom, editing by Niklas Pollard)
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