Klarna’s long-serving CTO Koen Köppen joins Mollie

Dutch fintech Mollie has hired one of Europe’s most prominent chief technology officers, after poaching Koen Köppen from Klarna.

Köppen joined Klarna back in 2011 and became the buy now, pay later giant’s CTO in 2017 overseeing its phenomenal growth to become Europe’s most valuable fintech.

Now Köppen will look to repeat the trick at Mollie, the fast-growing payments provider which last June raised $800m at a $6.5bn valuation.

“Having spent more than a decade in fintech and having helped Klarna to scale across Europe and beyond, I’m here to help Mollie harness its huge opportunity for growth,” said Koen on his appointment. 

“Mollie is one of Europe’s most exciting high-growth businesses and is at the forefront of enabling small- and medium-sized online retailers to take on larger ecommerce competitors.”

Köppen already had close links with Mollie prior to his joining, having sat as a member of the company’s Supervisory Board and Audit/Risk Committee since January 2020.

He stepped down from both positions in March 2022.

Among Köppen’s first tasks will be to grow the engineering team at Mollie, while working to scale up the company’s technology and support future products and services.

Mollie’s CEO Shane Happach called the hire a “unique opportunity for Mollie to secure an experienced leader with deep expertise in the financial ecosystem”.

“Koen has led large teams through many of the modern-day, complex challenges and he is the perfect person to help continue to scale our business.”