BNPL firm, Klarna To Complete Acquisition of PriceRunner

BNPL firm, Klarna has completed the acquisition of Swedish comparison shopping service, PriceRunner for an undisclosed amount. The company announced its latest acquisition on Monday.

David Fock, Klarna’s chief product officer stated, “The acquisition will serve to strengthen our bank, card and payment services and support a competitive global landscape.”

PriceRunner has built a formidable comparison shopping service in the five years since its establishment. The company’s operation covers Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. It compares more than 3.4m products from 22,500 different retailers spread across 25 countries and makes over €44 million in revenue annually.

As part of the deal, Klarna will absorb all 170 team members of PriceRunner into its ranks.

Speaking about the acquisition, Mikael Lindahl, PriceRunner’s Chief Exo added, “We see Klarna as the ideal partner to accelerate growth and achieve our long-term vision to become the most loved comparison shopping service in the world.”

Should regulatory approval be given, the acquisition will be completed in the first quarter of 2022.

Acquisitions with an Intention

The acquisition of PriceRunner is the sixth by Klarna in 2021 alone.

Earlier in the year, Klarna purchased Mannheim-based fintech startup Stocard for about €110m. Next, it acquired social shopping platform Hero for about $160m. It also acquired influencer marketing platform Apprl and travel planner Inspiro1ck for undisclosed amounts. There are also indications the firm purchased San Francisco-based Toplooks in March.

With many people jumping on the “buy now, pay later” bandwagon, Klarna looks set to diversify into shopping and e-commerce. Klarna seems to be positioning itself to be the one-stop-shop for retail traders against the big names like Amazon, Google, and Facebook.”

The challenge, as Tomio Geron of Protocol, points out is “getting the merchants and customers to buy into the vision.”

Following the acquisition, Klarna will benefit from PriceRunner’s daily price updates, reviews, professional tests, and intelligent filtering. By integrating these functionalities into its app, it will improve the shopping experience of its 90 million users.