Klarna Has Reached 20 Million U.S Customers, Who's Behind The Global Fintech Company?

Global payments platform Klarna recently announced that it had reached a record of 20 million US customers, doubling in size since June last year.

The Swedish fintech startup reached unicorn status in September of 2020 and is currently valued at $45.6 billion -- and that number is only expected to grow as demand for 'buy now, pay later' services soar.

The Org delves into the org chart of the flexible payments provider and looks into the careers of the executive team that leads Klarna.

Before Sebastian Siemiatkowski founded what was to become fintech giant PayPal's largest rival company, he was actually... flipping burgers at Burger King. It was there he first met one of his co-founders, Niklas Adalberth. Then in 2005, along with Victor Jacobsson, the trio began working on building Klarna.

The concept behind Klarna is to build a platform that allows consumers to buy things without paying the upfront cost and without having to put them on a credit card. Consumers can now pay when and how they want to -- through direct payments, pay after delivery, or installment plans.

Of course, Siemiatkowski would not have been able to build his growing empire without the help of some established leaders.

Working closely with Siemiatkowski as Deputy CEO is Knut Frängsmyr. Frängsmyr joined Klarna in March 2012 as its Chief Legal Officer after working as a corporate lawyer for most of his career. He graduated from Stockholm and Uppsala University with a master's degree in law, then joined Oracle as a Contract Manager and Business Practices Specialist. Before joining Klarna, he was the Head of Legal for e-sports and gaming investment company, Modern Times Group.

Managing user experiences at Klarna is Chief Product Officer, David Fock. He joined the Klarna team in August of 2010 as Head of Integration Sales and slowly made his way into a more product-centric role. He was previously the Founder of HML Systems and the CEO of Clarion Bilstereo. During his time at Klarna, he has overseen the launch of the new Klarna app and the hiring of the team at Cookies, a peer-to-peer payment app that had filed for bankruptcy.

Guiding the expansion of Klarna’s banking products is Koen Köppen, Klarna’s CTO. Köppen joined the comapany in 2011 as a Senior Solutions Engineer. He later made his way up the ranks, holding positions including Director of Global Solutions, Director of Special Projects and VP Product. Prior to joining the company, he was a Consultant at Bergman Media Group. He was also an owner at Koncept, an architecture and design agency.

Experienced financial services executive Niclas Neglén spearheads all money-related decisions at Klarna. A relatively new addition to the Klarna team, Neglén joined the company in March this year after serving as COO of EMEA at HSBC Private Bank. Prior to joining HSBC, Neglén worked at GE for over 13 years, holding various leadership positions. Most recently, he was the CFO of GE Capital UK.

Leading the charge on attracting a larger user base to Klarna is CMO David Sandström. Sandström joined the company in April 2017 and has since guided the transformation of the unicorn payments platform into a global power brand. After graduating with an MBA from Stockholm School of Economics, Sandstrom worked at multiple marketing and advertising agencies, including Carat and DDB Stockholm. He was most recently a Partner at Bellbird, a PR and Communications agency.

Klarna's Chief Commercial Officer Luke Griffiths is responsible for scaling and leading Klarna to global markets. Previously the GM of Marketing Solutions of Europe and APAC at eBay, Griffiths has extensive experience expanding product reach. Over his career, he has also worked at e-Dialog, a provider of e-CRM marketing products, and vacation ownership company Wyndham Worldwide.

Griffiths works closely with Camilla Giesecke, Chief Expansion Officer at Klarna. Experienced in mergers and acquisitions, Giesecke started her career as an Analyst for JP Morgan Chase. She has since held multiple leadership positions in the investment banking space, including the Director M&A for Saab, a company that provides solutions for the defense sector, and the VP of M&A at Permobil, a healthcare solutions company.

COO Linda S Höglund has more than 20 years of experience in management, strategy and finance. She started at Klarna in May of 2011, where she held the position of EVP and CFO for almost four years. In 2016, Höglund decided to leave the company and joined Grab, South East Asia's leading transportation company, where she stayed for only a year. Then, from 2017 to early this year, Höglund served as CFO and General Partner at Swedish venture capital and private equity firm Luminar Ventures. She rejoined Klarna in March 2021.