The owner of Swedish furniture retail giant Ikea has paid $22.5 million for a minority stake in white label buy now, pay later player Jifiti.
Made through the investment arm of Ingka Group, the deal builds on an existing partnership between Jifiti and Ikea, which has 389 stores and a an e-commerce presence in 32 countries.
Ikea, with its local banking partners in Spain, France, Portugal and Belgium, has been offering financing in its stores via the Jifiti platform since 2019 and is now rolling out into other countries.
The aim is to have the Jifiti platform facilitate the Ikea point-of-sale financing across markets, providing an instalments payment option for 706 million annual in-store customers and 3.6 billion e-commerce visitors worldwide.
The investment is part of a concerted move into financial services by Ikea: In February it agreed to buy a 49% stake in Ikano Bank with the aim of offering a full suite of banking services instore and online.
Krister Mattsson, MD, Ingka Investments, says: "Ingka Group is taking decisive steps into financial services, and a core part of our journey is to help make Ikea more affordable and accessible for our customers. This deal will further our integration of easily accessible financing solutions into the Ikea offering."
Jifiti says it will use the funding for technological and product development and to scale internationally to new markets as it bids to win over more banks, lenders and merchants to its white label platform.
Despite the Ikea connection, the firm stresses that it will remain bank, card network and retailer agnostic, and will retain full independence and control over its operations.