Klarna Chief Marketing Officer Steps Down After Nine Years

Klarna’s leadership team is set to see some big changes as 2027 approaches. 

The company has announced that both its Chief Marketing Officer David Sandström and Niclas Neglén, its Chief Financial Officer will be stepping down early next year – with new leadership yet to be announced. 

According to Klarna, these transitions have been planned, with both Niclas and David set to support the leadership transitions. Both of them have been with the company for some time – with David first joining the company in 2017. 

“Niclas and David have helped shape what Klarna is,” says Sebastian Siemiatkowski, Co-Founder and CEO of Klarna. “Niclas has built the finance organisation that took us public and has been a trusted partner to me and the Board through six years of growth and change. 

“David has given Klarna a voice; he took a Nordic payments company and has built one of the most recognised brands in global finance. Both will leave Klarna a stronger company than the one they joined, and I am grateful to them both.” 

Building a global brand

When David first joined Klarna in April 2017, the company was on the precipice of receiving a full European banking license. 

According to David, he was hired by Sebastian at this time with one goal in mind: to turn the fintech payments tool into a global consumer brand. 

And that he did. Responsible for consumer growth, brand, marketing design and communications, David scaled consumers from 20 million up to 118 million and took Klarna to 26 markets, while cutting Klarna’s marketing budget in half between the years of 2022 and 2025. 

He has also helped the brand become more culturally relevant – creating Klarna’s first ever Super Bowl ad and overseeing a series of brand partnerships with celebrities such as Paris Hilton, Snoop Dogg and Lady Gaga. 

"Klarna has been the defining chapter of my working life,” David said, upon the announcement. “Building this brand with an extraordinary team has been a privilege, and I am proud of what we built to get here.”

Managing consumer demand

While Klarna has shared that it will be looking for a New York-based CFO – with Sebastian sharing on an earnings call that the company needs a strong financial presence close to Wall Street – it is yet to disclose any plans for its next CMO. 

The company has been growing as of late, delivering an adjusted operating profit of US$68m in Q1 2026, compared to US$3m in the same period last year, but the next Chief Marketing Officer will need to be prepared to deal with some key challenges for the brand – including weakening consumer spending in Germany, its largest market by volume. 

German retail sales grew by less than 1% during the first half of 2026, adjusted for inflation, due to weak consumer demand and a high cost of living in the market. 

To combat this, the company’s incoming Chief Marketing Officer will need to help sustain Klarna’s brand momentum and help it more strongly connect with consumers across the sector. 

Who are Klarna’s key partners? 

• Stripe: Headquartered in San Francisco, US, and led by CEO Patrick Collison, fintech giant Stripe partners with Klarna to embed flexible payment solutions directly into its global infrastructure. The integration enables millions of businesses using Stripe to activate Klarna at checkout with minimal technical overhead. This strategic collaboration expands Klarna's merchant distribution across international markets, while allowing Stripe merchants to offer flexible payment options, boosting conversion rates and consumer basket sizes without requiring complex manual software integrations.  
• Adyen: Based in Amsterdam, Netherlands, and headed by co-CEOs Pieter van der Does and Ingo Uytdehaage, financial technology firm Adyen integrates Klarna's payment options directly into its unified commerce platform. The partnership allows large enterprise retailers across Europe, North America and Asia-Pacific to seamlessly deploy flexible finance across both e-commerce and point-of-sale systems. By simplifying backend integration, Adyen ensures global merchants can rapidly launch Klarna's pay-later solutions, driving international scale, streamlining fraud management and enhancing consumer payment choice.  
• OpenAI: Headquartered in San Francisco, US, and led by CEO Sam Altman, AI innovator OpenAI serves as a core technology partner for Klarna. With OpenAI's enterprise models, Klarna developed an AI-powered shopping assistant and customer service agent capable of managing two-thirds of customer service chats. This collaboration allows Klarna to automate routine customer communications, provide personalised product recommendations and significantly cut operating costs, demonstrating how generative AI tools can transform financial user experiences and operational scale.
• Attentive: Headquartered in New York, US, and led by CEO Amit Jhawar, conversational marketing platform Attentive partners with Klarna to manage direct-to-consumer mobile marketing. Through personalised SMS and email integrations, the platform allows e-commerce merchants to automatically promote Klarna's flexible payment options during high-intent shopping moments. By combining real-time customer engagement with flexible finance at checkout, the partnership helps online retailers boost opt-in subscriber rates, increase order values and drive higher payment conversions across mobile channels.