With a full banking licence received from the Swedish Financial Supervisory Authority, Finansinspektionen, Klarna of Stockholm is now a key player in cross-border retail banking and financial marketplaces of Europe.
The excitement that followed the award-winning news is best reflected in the words of Klarna’s CEO, Sebastian Siemiatkowski. “We are now one of Europe’s largest banks with 60 million customers, 70,000 merchants and working seamlessly across borders.”
Klarna started as a payments banking system for customers to shop online, way back in 2005 in Stockholm, Sweden, and saw rapid growth over the past decade, and today is a widespread technology-savvy operation in payments and retail banking across borders.
With the new status as a licensed full banking facility, Klarna’s operations now shift to high gear with a broadened product portfolio and high-efficiency transaction capabilities to satisfy customers and merchants across a larger international banking space.
The core philosophy of Klarna, of reaching out to the last customer’s individual needs remains intact, even through this major transformation phase, assured the bank’s top management thinkers.
The ‘mission remains as relevant as ever, to make paying and now retail banking as simple, safe and above all, smooth as possible’, is how they look at the new development within the bank.
The key factors that leveraged Klarna to move into this place of high reckoning is the bank’s insistence on high technology platforms for operations, its ‘no-organizational legacy’ approach, and the sharp focus on customer experience, innovation and simplicity.
Klarna’s tryst with these core philosophies will drive its success in the coming years, and will re-write parts of retail banking service as we know it, predicts some banking industry analysts.
“As the entire banking value chain is being challenged, the payments sector has seen the most profound transformation. Klarna has played a role in disrupting payments services for the better and now as a consumer-oriented, product driven and technology intensive bank, we have the tools to drive change in retail banking. We will do this by providing solutions that ensure a smooth customer experience, help people streamline their financial lives and continue to support businesses by solving the complexity in handling payments. The opportunities are tremendous, it is a thrilling prospect.“ commented Sebastian Siemiatkowski.
