Fintech company Klarna to open a technology hub in Madrid

Klarna, the second-largest fintech company in the world and the first in Europe, according to data from the consulting firm CBInsights, has chosen Madrid to open its new technology hub. The Swedish financial services company says it will hire a team of 500 engineers and qualified professionals to develop and enhance solutions for all its business areas. Among its clients are brands such as Mango, Adidas, Ikea, Samsung, Nike, Aliexpress, Expedia, and Michael Kors.

The multinational, founded in Stockholm in 2005 and which offers payment solutions (direct payments, payment options after delivery and installment payments), will make the announcement this Wednesday together with the mayor of Madrid, José Luis Martínez-Almeida, and Pablo Vázquez, general director of Madrid Futuro. Klarna thus adds Madrid to its network of technology hubs, as it already has others in Stockholm, Berlin, and Milan.

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Klarna entered the Spanish market in 2020

The fintech company, which last year raised a $1 billion (about €880 million) investment round, raising its valuation to $31 billion (about €25.7 billion), entered the market in Spain in the summer of 2020 with an operations and sales team. Now, it is looking for engineers, product developers, designers and experts in data science and analytics, among other profiles. The company plans to incorporate the first of these profiles this year.

With the boost of the Madrid hub, Klarna will greatly expand the size of its current office, as it will be transformed into a global product development center. The company, which has 4,000 employees (1,400 engineers) worldwide, highlights that the announcement comes at a time when Madrid is trying to position itself as a European reference for the high-tech industry, in order to attract more investors and startups to the territory.

According to INE data, the capital accounts for 26% of R&D spending in Spain and already ranks as the third most important functional urban area in Europe. Sebastian Siemiatkowski, CEO of Klarna, highlighted that Madrid has “a huge pool of talent, good universities and more and more professionals who once explored a career outside Spain want to return.”

Among investors in Klarna, there are Visa and Atomico

Klarna, a leader in the buy now, pay later market, counts Sequoia Capital, Bestseller, Permira, Visa, and Atomico among its investors. The company, which allows users to defer payment of their purchases in several installments, without interest or creditworthiness studies, has 90 million end customers, works with 250,000 merchants, and handles two million transactions a day.

The company’s managers explained that they launched the project to facilitate online purchases, although they explain that their payment solutions are omnichannel and can be integrated in the checkout of the stores’ websites, in their online applications or in the physical stores.

Klarna has organized its operations in more than 450 teams, spread over three continents and with more than 90 nationalities. As the company explains, these teams operate as independent startups aligned with a common vision and mission. Each team is composed of approximately eight members, with different competencies and skills, and they acquire end-to-end responsibility for a problem or space related to the company’s global objectives. According to the firm, this helps them optimize the speed, flow and quality of their work, allowing them to scale their activity in a very short time.

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(Featured image by Florian Wehde via Unsplash)

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First published in Cinco Dias, a third-party contributor translated and adapted the article from the original. In case of discrepancy, the original will prevail.

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