Klarna CEO defends business despite massive losses and layoffs

Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski has defended his firm’s company product and the controversial “invest in now, pay back afterwards” field.

Klarna gives shoppers the choice of when to fork out for an merchandise — they can spend upfront, shell out in installments or hold off payment for a particular period of time of time. Critics say this permits people today to acquire matters they may possibly not necessarily be able to find the money for, whilst Klarna says it operates affordability checks to ensure that people can fork out them again.

In an interview with CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe” on Friday, the Swedish entrepreneur stated BNPL is “superior” to the credit history card design, boasting that the regular Klarna consumer has an fantastic equilibrium of $50, whilst the average credit history card user has an fantastic harmony of $5,000.

Siemiatkowski went on to say his business enterprise is “exceptionally economic downturn-proof” as opposed with regular credit score card corporations. Nonetheless, the fintech described a decline of $748 million previous yr and past thirty day period announced that it was laying off all over 10% of its 6,500 staff members as part of an effort and hard work to lower charges.

On major of that, Klarna will quickly be competing with Apple in the BNPL sector soon after the Apple iphone maker introduced this 7 days that it options to enter the market place with a new products known as Apple Pay back Afterwards.

That places BNPL gamers like PayPal, Affirm and Klarna in an uncomfortable location. The dread is that Apple, a $2 trillion company and the world’s second-most significant smartphone manufacturer, could attract clients away from this kind of products and services. Shares of Affirm have sunk 17% so considerably this 7 days on the news.

“I assume it truly is a closing, large embracement of what to me is a considerably much healthier kind of credit,” Siemiatkowski claimed of Apple’s entry into the industry.