Online payment solutions company Klarna made a move to bolster the brain power of its team today. The company has acquired Germany-based Cookies, a P2P payments startup that filed for bankruptcy earlier this month. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Cookies was founded by former N26 employees Garry Krugljakow and Lamine Cheloufi who launched the startup in an effort to become the Venmo of Europe. For Klarna, the acquisition is about talent and not about Cookies’ money transfer technology. The entire Cookies team, except for cofounder Krugljakow, will join Klarna and remain in Germany to become Klarna’s new Berlin office.
In August, we covered Cookies’ effort to change its business model into a messaging-based P2P payment service geared toward millennials. The messaging service included paymojis, emojis with special powers (such as a lightning bolt to make the payment send faster) that could be included alongside the payment. Regarding the transition, Cookies cofounder Cheloufi said, “I am thrilled to become part of Klarna together with our strong team and take on new innovative projects out of Berlin. For us, this is a unique chance to join Klarna and benefit from their wealth of expertise, tech and talent.”
Founded in 2005 in Stockholm, Klarna is headquartered in Ohio with offices in San Francisco, New York, Tel Aviv, and across Europe. The company demonstrated its online payment processing service at FinovateSpring 2012. Recently Klarna went live with SAP’s Smart Accounting for Financial Instruments, (Smart AFI), a solution that offers a centralized sub-ledger that integrates directly into a company’s accounting-documentation chain. In September, the company added American Express as a payment option at checkout.
The post Klarna Acqui-hires P2P Payment Company Cookies appeared first on Finovate.