Tab is the Stockholm-based infrastructure for smart digital receipts. The company connects merchants and point-of-sale systems to deliver receipts automatically, at scale, replacing paper and email with structured, machine-readable data.
In April 2026, Tab announced it had been acquired by Kivra, Sweden's leading digital mailbox used by more than 6 million people. The deal brings Tab's receipt infrastructure together with Kivra's distribution network, accelerating the shift to fully digital, automatic receipts across the Nordics.
- 12,000 connected merchants across Sweden at the time of the deal
- Millions of digital receipts processed every month
- Profitable business with a lean team
- Founded by Calle Mellbin and Hector Zarate, backed by Icebreaker.vc
- Acquisition closed in roughly 3-4 weeks using Papermark
The Tab team ran the entire M&A process through Papermark, sharing product IP, financials, legal documents, and commercial agreements with Kivra's team in a single secure data room.
Why Tab said yes to Kivra
Tab and Kivra had been working toward the same vision from opposite ends: Tab focused on total coverage at the merchant and point-of-sale layer, Kivra focused on absolute distribution to end users.
"Coverage and distribution have always been two sides of the same equation. Together we can accelerate the shift toward fully digital, automatic receipts at scale." - Hector Zarate, Co-founder, Tab
Joining forces with Kivra was the fastest way to turn that shared vision into reality, so the team moved into deal mode.
The hard part: opening the books without leaks
An acquisition means opening up nearly everything about the company to the buyer, including the parts that are most sensitive if they ever leak.
For Tab, the critical concerns were:
- Intellectual property - engineering designs, integrations, and product docs that competitors would love to see
- Leakage risk - standard PDFs carry metadata and can be forwarded, printed, or shared by accident
- Who sees what - the buyer's team is usually bigger than the seller's, and not everyone needs access to everything
- Speed - the team wanted to close in weeks, not months, without slowing things down with back-and-forth emails
Email attachments and consumer file-sharing tools were not an option. Tab needed a data room that was secure by default but still fast enough for a lean team to run on their own.
How they ran the deal in Papermark
Tab set up a dedicated data room in Papermark and used it as the single source of truth for the entire deal.
Clean folder structure
The team organized everything into folders and sub-folders inside the data room: legal, financials, product, engineering, commercial contracts, and HR. Kivra's team could navigate the deal the same way they would navigate a shared drive, without anyone needing to hunt for files in email threads.
IP protection without metadata leakage
Every document uploaded to Papermark is rendered as a protected view, not the raw PDF. That means the original file and its metadata never leave the data room. Viewers see the document exactly as Tab intended, and cannot pull hidden author info, revision history, or embedded attachments out of the file.
Granular permissions per folder
Tab could grant the buyer's legal team access to legal folders, the product team access to product folders, and keep the most sensitive IP gated to a smaller group. Permissions were set per folder and per user, so there was no risk of a junior reviewer stumbling into the source code walkthroughs.
Dynamic watermarking
Every page every viewer opened was stamped with their own email and a timestamp. If anything ever leaked, Tab would know exactly where it came from. That alone was enough to keep everyone on the buyer side careful with what they did with the documents.
Real-time analytics
Tab could see who on Kivra's side opened which document, which pages they spent time on, and who had not yet looked at the material. That visibility made negotiation calls far more productive - the team knew what the buyer had actually read before jumping on Zoom.
What happened
- Acquisition closed in 3-4 weeks from data room open to signed deal
- Zero leakage of IP, financials, or commercial documents
- Full visibility into buyer-side engagement across every folder
- One single link for the entire deal, no zip files or email threads
- Lean team ran the whole process without hiring a dedicated deal ops person
Tab's smart receipts now reach the 6M+ users on Kivra, and the combined company is pushing toward the vision both sides always had: total coverage on the merchant side, absolute distribution on the user side.
The short summary
M&A - Tab used Papermark data rooms, granular permissions, dynamic watermarking, and viewer analytics to run a full company acquisition in 3-4 weeks without leaking sensitive IP.
What ended up in the data room
- Financial statements and cap table
- Commercial contracts with merchants and partners
- Product and engineering documentation
- Legal agreements and IP assignments
- Team and HR documents
"With Papermark the whole acquisition was secure and easy. We could protect our IP, avoid leakage, and see exactly who was reading what. The whole deal took 3-4 weeks."
Papermark features Tab finds most valuable 🚀
IP Protection
Share sensitive product and engineering IP without exposing metadata
Viewer Analytics
See exactly who opened each document and how long they spent on each page
Data Room Folders
Clean folder and sub-folder structure for legal, financial, and product docs
Leakage Protection
Dynamic watermarking and granular permissions to stop docs ending up with competitors
Granular Permissions
Control exactly who from the buyer side can see each folder and file
