“Greece has learned the hard way about bad forms of credit and we believe that what we provide is healthier, interest free, with fixed payments. It demonstrates significant advantages over traditional credit cards.” These words describe the CEO and co-founder of the Swedish Klarna, Sebastian Semyatkowski, in an interview with K one of the reasons why the company launched a payment service in our country, while focusing on reaching profitability next year. According to him, through Klarna, Greek merchants have the opportunity to enter other markets, such as German-speaking markets, as well as markets in Eastern Europe, the UK, the USA, etc.

“Klarna aims to be one of the first banks to offer its services in all European countries. We believe that there are great opportunities there, and in this respect Greece is a very important market for us. In addition, Greece has seen a huge growth in e-commerce in recent years, accelerated by COVID-19, but still does not offer a good user experience in terms of payments, very similar to when we started in Sweden many years ago. He still has a lot of deliveries that are made for cash, clicks, security codes, which makes the process tedious,” he notes. Klarna, unlike traditional forms of credit, allows Greek consumers to pay in three interest-free payments with a debit card. This payment method prevents over-borrowing as well as fees such as interest payments if someone does not pay the full amount due on time. More than 50 companies already use Klarna (Pay in 3) services in Greece, including Public (who also invested in the company), H&M, etc., and this number is expected to grow in the coming days and weeks. “We know from past experience that there is an anti-credit card climate in Greece and this is very similar to what has led to our success in other markets. Sweden is also a very “anti-credit” market, which made our decision because there is a different form of credit than the traditional one,” he points out to K. Klarna’s loss ratio is less than 1% (ie more than 99% of its loans have been repaid), which is 30-40% below the norm for the credit card industry.

In the Greek market, there are still a lot of deliveries made for cash, clicks, security codes, which makes the process tedious.

In terms of competition and the launch of related services, even by traditional banks, the banking industry is now going through a phase of transition and change, reminiscent of what happened at the beginning of the development of e-commerce, when merchants began to look closely at the sale of goods on the Internet. In the long term, he said, “Some fintech companies will survive, some banks will buy fintech companies to solve innovative problems, some banks will manage to reinvent themselves, and some others will cease to exist in ten years because they don’t adapt quickly.” enough for the new environment. We will see mixed competition.”

Regarding the regulation of the BNPL market, the debate that has unfolded in the EU, he characteristically notes that “we always say to politicians: ‘Yes, bring in the rules’, ‘but bring in good rules that promote competition and protect consumers in the market’.” at the same time from those who want to exploit them.

Goals

In May last year, the company cut staff by 10%. Then Mr. Semyatkovsky said that “when we were drawing up a business plan for 2022, the world was very different,” referring to the war in Ukraine, the impending recession, rising inflation. The company posted a loss of $572.9 million in the first half of 2022 and raised $800 million in its latest funding round at a valuation close to $6.7 billion, 85% below the previous estimate of $46 billion. “Our plan is to return to profitability next year on a monthly basis and I think this is very likely despite market conditions,” he told K, reiterating that investor confidence has changed rapidly as the company continues to grow. albeit slower in more established markets.”