SME 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.

Billink is a Dutch payment platform that strips away the friction from business-to-business transactions. Rather than forcing companies to choose between immediate payment and extended credit terms, Billink lets B2B buyers pay later while sellers get funded upfront—a genuine middle ground that's rare in European commerce. The company operates as a bridge between e-commerce platforms, marketplaces, and their merchants, embedding flexible payment options directly into the checkout experience. For online sellers, Billink handles the credit risk and collections; for buyers, it means cash flow breathing room without the paperwork of traditional trade credit. It's not quite a lender, not quite a payments processor, but something more pragmatic: a working capital solution disguised as a checkout button. The platform has gained traction in the Benelux and beyond by solving a specific, genuine problem—SMEs and small merchants need working capital flexibility, and their customers need better payment terms. Billink does both simultaneously. In a fintech landscape crowded with neobanks and lending startups chasing consumer audiences, Billink operates in the quieter, more profitable corner of B2B commerce, where financial friction still costs businesses real money.

Invoice financing in Spain has long been a banker's game—slow, opaque, and locked behind relationship networks. Novicap flips that script by giving SMEs instant access to capital against their outstanding invoices, no lengthy underwriting, no collateral theatre. The platform connects small businesses directly to a network of investors and alternative lenders, letting them unlock cash in days rather than months. It's fundamentally a working capital solution, but positioned as infrastructure for growth rather than a desperate scramble for liquidity. The company has built its reputation in Spain and across Western Europe by automating what was historically a manual, inefficient process. Where traditional supply chain finance moves at the speed of relationship calls and coffee meetings, Novicap operates at digital velocity. It handles the underwriting, the documentation, the investor matching—all behind an API that plugs into existing accounting software. For founders and finance directors running lean operations, that's the difference between scaling and stalling. The platform taps into the broader shift toward embedded finance and instant liquidity, positioning itself at the intersection of fintech infrastructure and SME empowerment. In a region where cash flow remains the primary killer of otherwise healthy businesses, Novicap offers a genuinely practical alternative to traditional banking.