Alma is a French BNPL (buy-now-pay-later) payment solution operated by Alma SAS (176 Avenue Charles de Gaulle, 92200 Neuilly-sur-Seine, France; RCS Nanterre 839 100 575), founded in 2019 by Louis Chatriot. The product enables merchants to offer customers payment in 2, 3, or 4 interest-free installments, medium-term financing in 10 or 12 installments, and deferred "Pay Later" options at 15 or 30 days, covering online, in-store (via payment terminal integrations including Adyen and Ingenico), and call-centre sales channels. As of 2026 Alma serves 21,800+ merchants across France, Germany, Belgium, Spain, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and Portugal, with a notable customer list including Maisons du Monde, Nature & Découvertes, Maje, Promod, Etam, Lancel, and Alain Afflelou.
For an EU-sovereignty audit Alma is the cleanest French corporate in the BNPL category, incorporated as a French SAS with a French registered address and no disclosed US parent or US-PE majority stake. The ownership-risk element is the investor base: the company raised €210M in 2022 (round led by Eurazeo Growth and Cathay Innovation, both French/Franco-Asian with EU-anchored management, alongside earlier backers including Idinvest Partners). The cap table is predominantly French/European VC, which keeps ownership_signal: eu_owned under the directory's taxonomy. The material CLOUD Act risk comes from infrastructure: the legal notice explicitly names Google Cloud Platform as the hosting provider (8 rue de Londres, 75009 Paris, the Paris GCP region address), and GCP is a US-owned service regardless of the EU region. No public DPA or sub-processors list was found on accessible pages at audit.
Pricing is commission-based per transaction with no monthly fee; rates vary by installment type and market. PCI DSS Level 1 certification is confirmed for the payment-processing partner. Best fit: French and broader EU merchants wanting a BNPL-first checkout experience with a European legal entity: particularly retail, furniture, fashion, and opticians already represented in the customer base.