Digital banking and payment service provider, Klarna, is now officially listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) after more than 1,5 years of preparations.
Klarna, a company that offers digital banking and flexible BNPL payments, began trading on the NYSE under the ticker symbol KLAR on Sept. 10.
The company’s CEO and co-founder, Sebastian Siemiatkowski, marked the occasion by ringing the bell in New York and streaming the event live for employees, partners, customers, and investors. He reflected on Klarna’s decades-long growth since its start in 2005.
What began as a small idea to make shopping and payments smoother for customers has become a global business with many people involved in technology, customer service, and innovation.
Going public in New York is a major milestone and a signal of Klarna’s ambitions to continue growing and improving how people shop and pay. The company thanked its team for their work and dedication, highlighting that this is the beginning of a new phase, not the end.
Klarna’s management first voiced their intention to go public in early 2024. At that point, the fintech firm’s valuation was $7.85 billion. Since last July, the BNPL giant has been reportedly seeking financial advisers for its initial public offering, displaying confidence that the IPO market would demonstrate a recovery tendency in 2025.
Although the recovery wasn’t even across different segments, we can see that these predictions held true, as the number of IPOs registered in the U.S. in Q2 2025 rose by about 16% compared to Q2 2024.
Hence, after some final preparations, Klarna debuted on the NYSE at $52.00 per share. Initially, Klarna’s stock jumped 16%, valuing the BNPL leader at $17.5 billion. That surge was bigger than expected but still far from Klarna’s all-time-high valuation of $45.6 billion in 2021. Today, KLAR trades at around $44 per share. At the same time, analysts are not concerned about the decline since it’s very common for highly anticipated IPOs to see big swings in price immediately after opening.
