Like its home country, which has divided world opinion with its contrarian stance on coronavirus, the $5.5b-valued Klarna is a Rorschach test. Pessimists can find plenty of dark clouds. In a happier view, the defaults will never materialise, an effective vaccine will arrive, economies will repair without depression levels of unemployment. And Klarna will follow Skype and Spotify to become the next Swedish sensation to make it big.
As for the US challengers: “We have competed with PayPal for many many many years”, and have still attracted 85m users. And Amazon is late to the party. “It’s not like ecommerce companies in Europe have just been sleeping for 15 years,” he said. “Expecting [Amazon] to reach a 50 per cent market dominance as they have in the US is to not really recognise that the market has moved since then. This is not 2005 any more.”
https://www.ft.com/content/5f03e356-7854-491c-85a5-5b4f23ba1fdd