Swedish payments firm Klarna has nearly tripled its valuation to $31 billion in less than six months with a new $1 billion private fundraising round, the company said on Monday.
The new round, which was oversubscribed four times and will make the “buy now pay later” firm the most valuable European startup, confirms a Reuters story last week that it was finalising another private funding round..
It also puts the Swedish fintech on a par with many of Europe’s biggest listed financial houses. At $31 billion, the company’s value is comparable to major financial houses such as Barclays, Credit Suisse and Swiss Re and is larger than Germany’s biggest lender Deutsche Bank.
Klarna Chief Executive Sebastian Siemiatkowski told Reuters he believes there was more opportunity ahead.
“If you look at this valuation and compare it to some of the large retail banks in this whole industry, we are still a fraction of the opportunity that’s out there,” he said in an interview.
Question marks over the “buy now pay later” business model have arisen during the COVID-19 crisis, with Britain among countries looking to bring in new legislation to protect consumers from over-extending themselves.
But investors seem undeterred, and the latest deal caps a meteoric rise in value for Klarna, which completed a $650 million funding round in September from a group of investors led by Silver Lake that valued it at $11 billion.
More than 30 new and existing investors took part in the latest funding round with no investor playing the role of an anchor, a source familiar with the matter said.
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