BNPL Companies in Europe

Three Stockholm School of Economics students pitched an idea at a university entrepreneurship competition in 2005: let shoppers receive goods before they pay, and put the credit risk on the merchant side. The pitch finished last. They built it anyway. Sebastian Siemiatkowski, Niklas Adalberth, and Victor Jacobsson launched what was originally called Kreditor, later renamed Klarna, and spent the next two decades turning that rejected idea into one of Europe's most recognised fintech brands. The core insight held up: millions of people would rather split a purchase into three instalments than reach for a credit card, and merchants would pay for the privilege of offering that option because it reduces cart abandonment and increases average order values. Klarna grew from a Swedish checkout button into something considerably more complex. It now holds a banking licence in Sweden, offers savings accounts, issues its own card, and operates across more than 45 markets with around 93 million active consumers and 675,000 merchant partners at the end of 2024. The US, which Klarna entered in 2015, has become its largest market by revenue, a fact the company underlined by listing on the New York Stock Exchange in September 2025 under the ticker KLAR, raising $1.37 billion at IPO. The financial trajectory has been bumpy. Klarna reported net income of $21 million in 2024, a return to profitability after a bruising 2022 that included an 85% valuation cut and significant layoffs that reduced headcount from over 7,000 to around 3,400. What survived the restructuring was a leaner company with $2.81 billion in revenue and a clearer strategic direction: AI. Klarna's partnership with OpenAI produced a customer service assistant it claims handles the equivalent of 700 full-time agents, and generative AI now manages roughly two-thirds of customer chats. The honest assessment of where Klarna sits today: it's no longer purely a BNPL provider and it's not quite a bank. It's somewhere in between, a consumer finance platform that knows more about your shopping behaviour than your bank does, and is betting that's worth a lot.

Biller provides B2B buy-now-pay-later and invoice payment solutions.

Estonian consumer credit at the point of online purchase has been transformed by the combination of digital infrastructure that lets credit decisions happen in real time and consumer expectations of completing purchases without leaving the merchant checkout. ESTO was founded in Tallinn in 2016 to serve that specific moment — providing buy now pay later and instalment financing options integrated into Estonian and Baltic merchant checkouts. The platform connects merchants with consumers seeking flexible payment options at purchase, handling underwriting, settlement, and ongoing customer relationship management for the credit products it originates. ESTO has expanded across the Baltic markets and into broader Central European territories, building a position in the BNPL category as one of the regional specialists that competes alongside the larger European platforms by virtue of its local market depth. In the Baltic BNPL landscape, where international platforms have made selective entries but have generally not built the merchant integration depth that domestic operators have, ESTO represents the local champion category. The competitive question for that category is whether local depth in a single regional market can sustain a competitive position as international BNPL platforms continue to expand and as the underlying economics of the category continue to evolve through cycles of growth and regulatory tightening.

Specialised banking for consumer credit — focused on lending products distributed through merchant partnerships rather than building general-purpose retail banking — is a model with deeper European roots than the venture-backed BNPL conversation suggests. Inbank was founded in Tallinn in 2011 as a specialist lender focused on point-of-sale consumer credit, partnering with retailers across Estonia and the broader Baltic and Central European region to offer instalment finance at the moment of purchase. The company received a full Estonian banking licence and has built operations across Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, and the Czech Republic, expanding from a domestic specialist into a Pan-European consumer finance bank. Inbank is publicly listed on the Nasdaq Tallinn exchange — one of the few publicly traded Baltic fintechs — giving it both the regulatory standing of a licensed bank and the funding access of a public company. Its product range covers point-of-sale finance, BNPL, and consumer deposit products, with merchant partnerships across automotive, electronics, home improvement, and other categories where consumers commonly finance purchases. In the European specialist consumer banking landscape, Inbank represents one of the more successful examples of a focused operator scaling across borders while maintaining the operational discipline of a regulated bank.

Narvi is a European fintech that simplifies embedded lending for e-commerce and marketplace platforms. Rather than forcing merchants to build lending infrastructure from scratch, Narvi handles the entire loan lifecycle—from origination through servicing—as a white-label API that integrates directly into checkout flows. The company targets online retailers and marketplace operators who want to offer buy-now-pay-later and installment credit without the operational overhead of underwriting, collections, or compliance. Narvi handles credit decisions using proprietary scoring models and manages all regulatory requirements, while merchants simply embed a widget and capture incremental revenue. In a market crowded with point-solution BNPL providers, Narvi positions itself as a full-stack lending partner rather than a payment mode. The company serves merchants across Europe and has built integrations with major e-commerce platforms, making it simpler for smaller retailers to compete with well-funded rivals on financing offerings. Narvi represents a growing class of embedded finance infrastructure plays—companies enabling non-financial businesses to offer financial products without becoming financial institutions themselves. Its role is to abstract complexity and regulatory burden, letting merchants focus on customer experience and growth.

Scalapay is a BNPL (buy now, pay later) platform built for the European e-commerce market, offering shoppers the ability to split purchases into interest-free instalments at checkout. Rather than simply bolting financing onto existing payment flows, Scalapay positions itself as a full-stack infrastructure play—handling underwriting, risk management, and merchant integration from a single API. The company targets mid-market and enterprise retailers across fashion, electronics, and beauty verticals, regions where instalment purchasing is becoming table stakes for conversion. What sets Scalapay apart is its focus on merchant flexibility and real-time decision-making. While competitors often impose rigid lending terms or lengthy approval processes, Scalapay emphasizes transparent pricing and instant qualification, allowing merchants to offer financing without friction or hidden costs. The platform integrates seamlessly into checkout experiences—both web and mobile—and provides merchants with detailed analytics on customer behaviour and financing uptake. Scalapay operates in a crowded BNPL landscape, but differentiates through its emphasis on profitability and sustainable lending rather than growth-at-any-cost customer acquisition. The company has expanded across multiple European markets, particularly in Southern Europe and the Mediterranean, where instalment culture is deeply embedded. Its positioning sits between pure-play consumer lenders and white-label infrastructure providers, serving merchants who want financing capabilities without building their own credit infrastructure. In the broader fintech ecosystem, Scalapay exemplifies the maturation of embedded finance—moving beyond the novelty of BNPL into building durable, profitable lending platforms that merchants and consumers both trust.