• Klarna acquires Analyzd to tie social to finance and payments

    Mike Butcher

    Mike Butcher is the European At Large with TechCrunch. As such he has a roving brief to write about Startups, Venture Capital, technology trends and emerging markets. A former grunge rock drummer, he became a long-time journalist, and has since written for UK national newspapers and magazines including The Financial Times, The Guardian, The Times, The Daily Telegraph and... → Learn More

    Wednesday, May 4th, 2011

    Many believe there is a big future in data driven finance and tying the social experience with payments. To that end roll-ups are happening. Klarna, a startup in the space for in-store credit and invoicing solutions for eCommerce, has acquired Analyzd, a team of risk management and fraud prevention experts operating in multiple geographies (the US, some EU countries and Israel). Terms were undisclosed.

    Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski says the Analyzd team will join Klarna and founder Ohad Ohad Samet – a noted expert in payments and risk management – will take on the role of Chief Risk Officer (CRO) as part of Klarna’s management team. He will head a data driven risk management team distributed across several locations (Stockholm, Tel Aviv and San Francisco). Analyzd’s Tel Aviv office will be taping into the Israeli hi-tech talent pool.

    Klarna, which has investment from Sequoia Capital, has processed over 20 million payments in the last few years. It also has Mike Moritz on its board as well as Facebook and Skype investor Klaus Hommels.

    The idea is to become one of the major merchant services providers on a global scale. The company claims that during 2010 it increased revenue with more than 80 percent to 54 million USD.