Who Is Afraid Of Online Shopping?

By Tiffany Stelman, NoCamels February 06, 2012 2 minutes

(Photo: Archive)

News outlets around the world report on the rising trend of online shopping. In many instances, they say, it even overtakes shopping in stores. But while buying online is on the rise, are our concerns about providing credit card information online any less pertinent than they were years ago?

Many still worry about online shopping and that is why Swedish-Israeli company Klarna says it is continuously working to make online consumers feel safer about sharing their information. Founded in Sweden in 2005 by three students from the Stockholm school of Economics, Klarna is one of Europe’s leading providers of payment solutions for online businesses.

“We do this by letting the consumer receive the goods first and pay afterwards, while we assume the credit and fraud risks on goods from the e-stores.”

The company’s payment solutions,which are built using the Israeli programming language Erlang, are offered by more than 12,000 e-stores across Europe – mainly in Germany, Netherlands, Sweden, Finland, Norway and Denmark. The office in Israel focuses on Research & Development (R&D). Today the company has over 600 employees, most of them working at the headquarters in Stockholm.

“The main idea is that we – instead of just looking at the credit information of the customer – analyze and predict the buying behavior of the consumers,” Yuval Samet, one of the company’s founders, tells NoCamels.

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Klarna’s aim is to attract those people who currently avoid online trade due to information security breaches and the possible risks in providing websites with credit card details.

In May 2011, Klarna acquired the Israeli company Analyzd. “We see a great opportunity to dip into the talent pool of Israel and attract new talents to our company, especially within the high-tech segment,” adds Samet.

Last month Klarna received $155 million from new investors. The funding, according to the company, will be used to expand to new countries in Europe, grow in existing markets, develop their services and attract more talent to the organization during the coming year.

Photo by Jorge Franganillo