Klarna payments platform secures Sequoia backing and adds Mike Moritz to the board

Klarna, one of the biggest providers in Europe of in-store credit and invoice based payment solutions for the e-commerce sector, has secured funding from Sequoia Capital, which famously also backed Google. Terms have not been disclosed but we’ve learned Klarna will do a directed new share issue of SEK 70m (approx. $9 million).

Highly unusually, Mike Moritz, Sequoia Capital Partner and former board member of PayPal, Google and Yahoo, will join the Klarna board. This is significant as this is the first time ever that Moritz has joined a European company’s board.

Clearly Klarna now plans to expand across Europe. The Swedish comany launched in 2005 and plans to create new ways for consumers and Internet stores to reduce fraud and the risk involved in e-commerce and Internet payments.

Using Klarna’s system, consumers pay for products they order online after they have been delivered. This plus a choice of invoice of mobile payment is pushed as one of its USPs, explained here.

A provider of invoice based payments for the e-commerce sector operating in the Nordics, Holland and Germany, it has about 4500 merchants and handled 500 million Euro worth of transactions last year.