Introduction

It has been nearly two decades since Sebastian Siemiatkowski started Klarna, based on the simple idea of enabling customers to pay how they'd like. Today, Klarna is a fintech giant on a mission to revolutionize the retail banking industry. Headquartered in Sweden, Klarna is now a fully licensed bank operating across 45 markets. The company has scaled to over 150 million active consumers and over 450,000 merchant partners. Sebastian shares why he thinks of Klarna as a digital assistant that saves people time and money, why he thinks the banking industry will shrink (making Klarna a larger player in a smaller industry), and how growing up as a Polish immigrant in Sweden gave him a hunger for entrepreneurship.