Sweden's Klarna is on track toreport a more than 40% jump in the annual value of transactionscarried out on its payment platform to over $50 billion as moreconsumers move online during the COVID-19 pandemic, its chiefexecutive said.
The "buy now, pay later" company, whose peers include Affirm, QuadPay and AfterPay, had gross merchandisevolume (GMV) of $35 billion in 2019.
In comparison, Affirm, which has a market value of $27billion, had GMV of $4.64 billion for the year ended June 30, 2020.
Klarna has been investing heavily in the United States andthat has paid off with rapid growth in the country.
"We have been adding about a million new consumers per monthduring the fourth quarter in the U.S. alone," CEO SebastianSiemiatkowski said, adding the company now had 15 million usersin the United States.
Currently, Germany is the company's biggest market by volumeand revenue, but the United States is catching up fast and maytake the top spot by the end of the year.
Klarna has been expanding in other regions too, includingentering four new markets during the last year. Siemiatkowskisaid it planned to add five new markets between now and thesummer, without naming them.
The company will report fourth-quarter and full-year resultson Thursday.
While Klarna partnered with bitcoin exchange Safello lastweek, Siemiatkowski has reservations about the hype surroundingthe cryptocurrency.
"I do feel it is going to end badly for a lot of consumerswho will move too much of their savings into something thatstill is of speculative nature," he said. Source: Yahoo Finance