Klarna Targets $14B Valuation as Its ‘Disruptive Brand’ Readies IPO

The on-again, off-again public listing plans of buy now, pay later giant Klarna are now officially a go.

The Swedish FinTech filed Tuesday (Sept. 2) with the Securities and Exchange Commission to list on the New York Stock Exchange, selling 34.3 million shares on a yet-to-be-determined date, with the ticker KLAR. The price range is expected to be $35 to $37 per share, which would translate to about $1.3 billion in proceeds for the company.

The move would value Klarna at $14 billion; however, the valuation had been as high as $50 billion during the pandemic back in 2021.

Beyond the vagaries and volatility of valuation, the numbers in the latest filing detail the growth of an ecosystem that has been tied to, as Klarna described in the filing, its “disruptive brand.” With BNPL as a springboard, the filing indicated a strategy focused on expanding into an embedded finance platform.

The market Klarna is targeting is vast. According to the filing, Klarna sees its “serviceable addressable market” in the hundreds of billions of dollars, as $19 trillion of global consumer spending offers Klarna an “approximately $520 billion payments revenue opportunity associated with that spend, based on our average take rate in the last 12 months ended June 30, 2025.”

Global retail and travel spending across all markets (excluding China) is estimated to reach $35 trillion in 2027, per the filing. Klarna facilitated $112 billion in gross merchandise volume (GMV) in the 12 months ended June 30, up 13% year over year. Its revenues reached $3 billion for the same period, a 17% increase from the prior year.

As of June 30, Klarna counted 111 million active consumers and 790,000 merchants across 26 countries, the filing showed. Usage is geographically diverse. In Sweden, Klarna’s most mature market, 83% of adults were active Klarna consumers. In the United States, which the company describes as its key growth driver, Klarna reported that nearly half of the top 100 merchants in its major markets use Klarna at checkout.

Klarna’s consumer base is broad and representative of the general population. According to its filing, users span a range of income levels and educational backgrounds. The company is not a niche product limited to younger demographics, although it does see particularly strong adoption among digitally native young consumers. Average balances are lower than those carried on traditional credit cards. Klarna reported an average balance per consumer of $80, compared to $6,730 for U.S. credit cards in 2024. Klarna’s loan duration averages 40 days.

As for credit metrics, the company reported that 99% of loans were paid on time in the last 12 months, with its provision for credit losses representing 0.52% of GMV. By comparison, credit losses averaged 2.6% for Swedish competitors and 2.9% for U.S. banks, per the filing.

According to the filing, the company has expanded into categories such as travel, home and electronics, and food and beverage. Over 60% of transactions are now processed outside of traditional online retail checkouts, with in-store and app-based shopping driving usage growth.

On the merchant side, about 48% of the top 100 merchants in its major markets used Klarna in the last year, while 66% advertised on its network, the filing showed. Advertising has become a growing revenue source, climbing from $13 million in 2020 to $184 million in the last twelve months ended June 30. Klarna highlighted this as a key adjacency to its payments business, with the potential to capture part of a $570 billion global digital advertising opportunity.

Looking ahead, Klarna’s roadmap emphasizes broadening its financial services reach. Klarna already held $14 billion in consumer deposits as of June 30, a foundation it said in the filing can support a “plan to continue to grow our consumer retail banking solutions, which we believe will allow us to capture new market opportunities.” With its European banking license, Klarna can fund 95% of its lending activities through deposits, which the company has said are lower-cost and more stable than asset-backed financing.

Klarna is also investing in artificial intelligence, which it said drives efficiencies and enables better personalization. Its AI-powered shopping assistant, launched in 2024, is part of a strategy to create what Klarna described in the filing as a “personalized, trusted assistant making financial empowerment effortless.” By embedding AI into underwriting, customer service and shopping discovery, Klarna said it can scale while keeping risk and costs contained.

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