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Payment service provider Klarna: "Pandemic winner"
Photo: Georg Wendt / picture alliance / dpa
Last Monday, the financial world had its Tesla moment.
The Swedish payment service provider Klarna has raised a billion dollars from old and new donors and thus increased its valuation to 31 billion dollars (25.7 billion euros).
Klarna, probably known to most Germans under the Sofortüberweisung brand, has thus risen to become the most valuable company in financial technology (fintech) in Europe, and the company is in second place worldwide.
Incidentally, Klarna easily overtook Commerzbank and Deutsche Bank in terms of rating (see graphic).
And of course, such evaluations should be treated with caution, especially for companies that are not yet listed on the stock exchange, where the price and business figures are transparent at all times.
And of course the young fintech companies also benefit from the flood of money triggered by central banks.
Venture capital funds are seeing record inflows and needing to invest, which is driving prices.
But capital flows primarily to where investors see growth and thus profit opportunities.
More than 80 fintechs are known as “unicorns”, meaning that they are valued at more than a billion dollars.
According to the Economist, the industry as a whole weighs around $ 152 billion, and the trend is rising.
In the past twelve months, the German fintechs N26 (smartphone bank), Auxmoney (loan brokerage platform) and Mambu (banking software) have collected three-digit million amounts.
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