All the work that went into creating peer-to-peer payment app Cookies isn’t disappearing forever. After filing for bankruptcy, Swedish tech company Klarna approached the team behind Cookies so that they can join another fintech company. The entire Cookies team except one co-founder is joining Klarna, as Klarna announced and t3n reported.
I don’t think the two co-founders can work together again after the big meltdown that led to the bankruptcy. At least Cookies isn’t simply shutting down with nothing left but a few app screenshots. Klarna showed up during the insolvency process and made the best offer.
The Cookies team will stay in Berlin. In fact, it will become Klarna’s new office in Berlin. The company already has many offices around Europe as well as in New York and Tel Aviv — but Klarna wasn’t operating in Berlin yet.
Former Cookies employees will work on a new product for Klarna. While they couldn’t say what they’re going to work on, it wouldn’t surprise me to see Klarna expanding to the peer-to-peer payment space.
Klarna has been compared to PayPal, letting you pay for your e-commerce purchases using your email address and zip code. Merchants receive the money instantly, while customers are billed later so that you can cancel the order if you don’t receive your package.
The company operates in 18 markets and has become quite good at risk management and credit scoring. And of course, they already have a solid financial infrastructure for other potential fintech products. That could speed things up if the Cookies team wants to start a new peer-to-peer payment app from scratch.