Alibaba’s finance spinoff Ant Financial has taken a minority stake in FinTech Klarna.
In Brief:
-
The Swedish FinTech allows users to buy online and pay in instalments.
-
Reuters reports Ant’s stake amounts to less than 1%.
-
The companies will also deepen their collaboration as part of the deal.
What does this mean?
Klarna was valued at $5.5bn after its most recent funding round in August 2019. Its technology is used by more than 200,000 platforms including Alibaba’s AliExpress. Meanwhile AliPay is expanding globally and looking to make deals in markets outside of China, many of which Klarna now has a presence in.