In 2005, at exactly 11:06:40 am on April 10, Klarna’s first ever transaction took place at a Swedish bookshop called Pocketklubben.

In 2023, Klarna is an international company with 150m consumers and 500k retailers across 45 markets, but it wasn’t always that way. We were once a start-up from humble beginnings, and we went through many phases from our childhood and teenage years to the young adults we are today.

We will celebrate our 18th birthday, which symbolizes us coming of age as a young adult. A true milestone moment in Swedish tradition!

In the early 2000’s, online shopping was just being born and very different to what we know today. Rife with fraud and scams, it was widely regarded as unsafe and consumers were hesitant to share their credit card information and bank details online.

Klarna’s “Buy Now, Pay Later” brought a whole new level of trust and security to the online experience. By guaranteeing buyers’ protection and enabling shoppers to try before they buy, our safe and easy payments solution became a catalyst for e-commerce growth — a new tech star was born!

And our reputation as the new ‘digital’ kid on the block only grew from there, but we were still set up very much like a traditional bank. Blue suits and red ties were the uniform of choice. There was still much to learn.

By 2014, Klarna had become one of Europe's fastest-growing companies, with over 1,000 employees moving into a new headquarters in Stockholm, a significant milestone nearly a decade after the co-founders started in a crammed little office space.

Klarna's massive success made them a renowned tech wonder, but we continued to embody the characteristics of the industry we wanted to disrupt. We were on the path to becoming just another boring blue bank.

Something needed to change.