The Swedish payment service Klarna, whose value is estimated at 46 billion dollars, is cooperating with the US payment service provider Stripe. Stripe’s valuation is nearly $ 100 billion.
(Photo: Klarna)
Frankfurt With a valuation of nearly $ 100 billion, the US payment service provider Stripe is one of the most expensive unlisted start-ups in the western world. Klarna from Sweden is valued at $ 46 billion and is number one in Europe. Both companies are active in the booming online payment market – and have recently been working together.
The companies announced on Tuesday that they were entering into a “strategic partnership”. Specifically, this means: Merchants who use Stripe as a payment service provider can relatively easily integrate Klarna as a payment method in their online shop. So far, this has only been possible with great effort, a long lead time and for a few companies, explained the two financial start-ups (fintechs).
Klarna, in turn, uses Stripe as a so-called acquirer in the USA and Canada. The acquirer, also known as the merchant bank, takes over the payment processing from the consumer’s account, and usually makes an advance payment for the payment. This is particularly important in connection with credit card payments. In the USA, private Klarna users can also pay in installments by credit card.
It should not stop there: The two companies also announced that they were planning to “deepen their partnership and expand it to other countries and products in the future”.
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Cooperation between payment service providers is not uncommon. They work together especially when they each have a different business focus. In the spring, Computop and VR Payment launched a joint offer on the German market. The special thing about Stripe and Klarna is that two heavyweights cooperate.
Services hardly overlap
What Stripe and Klarna have in common is that they are benefiting from the boom in online shopping. According to the company, their services hardly overlap. Klarna primarily offers various payment methods – such as purchase in installments and on account – and is thus a competitor of the US payment service PayPal, but also of credit card companies.
Klarna, founded in 2005, started out as a payment processor, but has since developed into a kind of shopping app for consumers. Klarna also offers current accounts in Germany. Fintech has almost 100 million users worldwide and is active in almost 20 countries.
Stripe, on the other hand, sees itself as a technical service provider for companies. With a view to integrating various payment methods in online shops, Stripe is competing with the Dutch payment service provider Adyen, another young company that is already listed on the stock exchange.
Checkout.com and Worldline as well as in Germany, for example, the Nets subsidiary Concardis and Computop are competitors of Stripe. Stripe names Amazon, Google, Salesforce and Spotify as customers.
More: Unwanted chargebacks by Klarna: Customers get caught up in debt collection procedures.