Which Swedish fintech company pioneered “buy now, pay later” for e-commerce? The answer is Klarna.
Klarna was founded in Sweden in 2005 by Sebastian Siemiatkowski, Niklas Adalberth and Victor Jacobsson. Their idea was to make online checkout easier by allowing shoppers to receive goods before paying, while Klarna handled the transaction and payment risk for the merchant.
The service developed into several forms of short-term consumer credit, including paying later and splitting a purchase into installments. Klarna’s model helped popularize the modern “buy now, pay later” label in online retail, especially as e-commerce expanded across Europe and later the United States.
Klarna is not the same as PayPal Credit, Affirm or Afterpay, although all operate in overlapping digital-payment or installment-credit markets. Klarna has also expanded beyond deferred payments into digital banking, shopping tools and merchant services. “Pioneered” does not mean it invented every form of installment purchasing; rather, it was an early and highly influential specialist in modern online BNPL.