Swedish fintech Klarna has secured partnership with Vend, the leading Nordic marketplaces group. The company also announced that its antitrust case brought by PriceRunner subsidiary against Google ended in Klarna’s favour.
As part of the new strategic agreement, Klarna will become an available payment method across several of the Nordics’ largest online marketplaces, including Blocket (Sweden), FINN (Norway), Tori (Finland), and DBA (Denmark). Together, Vend’s marketplace portfolio generates more than 1 billion monthly visits, while Blocket alone serves over 5 million buyers and sellers each week and DBA reaches more than 2 million unique monthly users.
As Klarna’s flexible instalment options will get embedded directly into these marketplaces, buyers will be able to complete purchases using Klarna’s payment options, while sellers of second-hand goods and other items can enjoy a smoother and more secure transaction experience.
The rollout will begin during 2026, with Klarna gradually becoming available across the participating marketplaces.
In a separate announcement, Klarna notified that the PriceRunner company, which Klarna acquired in 2022 to add rich product discovery, price comparisons, and product reviews to its shopping app, has just won an antitrust case brought against Google.
The court has ruled in Pricerunner’s favor, awarding $1.97 billion in damages and accrued interest as a compensation for lost revenue caused by Google’s preferential treatment of its own comparison-shopping service over independent price-comparison services. At the same time, the award fact and its amount remain subject to appeal by Google.
“When markets work well, everyone benefits. Consumers get higher quality at lower cost, companies stay focused on serving customers rather than defending position, and society is better off for it. This ruling supports a healthier, more competitive market for the way people compare products and services — and that is good for everyone who shops,” said Dan Greaves, Head of Communications and Policy, Klarna.
The legal case brought up by Klarna’s subsidiary is part of a broader series of anti-monopoly litigations Google faced over the last several years. Thus, in 2024, the U.S. court found Google violated Section 2 of the Sherman Act. Regulators decided that Google illegally maintained monopolies in general internet search and search advertising. The tech giant had to pay billions of dollars to companies such as Apple, Samsung and Mozilla to remain the default search engine. Later, the court imposed remedies limiting Google’s exclusive distribution agreements and requiring it to share certain search data with qualified competitors.
The antitrust case was filed two months before Klarna completed legal acquisition of the PriceRunner service. Klarna itself collaborates with Google on many initiatives, especially those linked to AI-driven shopping experiences.
