Shortly after the IPO submission, Swedish fintech giant Kraruna announced on Monday it would offer purchases now and pay a loan after Walmart. The partnership with Walmart was previously owned by rivals.
Klarna offers loans to Walmart customers through OnePay. FintechStartup owns a majority stake and is supported by Ribbit Capital. Klarna will take over offering loans “late this year,” it said in a statement.
Shares of San Francisco-based Affirm had fallen 8% by early Monday afternoon, trading just over $46.
The two companies have been rivals for years, but the assertions have more focused on the US. It was released in 2021 and recently announced it had achieved $80 million in GAAP’s net profit. Klarna made a comeback of sorts after being hit hard by its valuation, reporting a net profit of $21 million in 2024. It’s a huge swing due to a loss of $244 million in 2023.
Last September, CEO and co-founder Max Levchin told PaymentsDive that he wanted to distinguish the company from his competitors, including Klarna. He told the Technology Conference last year that one way to do that is to focus on making revenue from individual transactions. He argued that Klarna and others are pushing for marketing revenue. However, a Klarna spokesperson disputed that he told the publication “a large portion of Klarna’s revenue is less drawn from marketing.”
Levchin went on to say that Affirm will not monetize transactions through advertising or marketing.
“I’m not criticizing it. It’s not my place to decide that they’re bad business,” he was quoted as saying. “But I love ours and ours is built around the idea that, ultimately, every transaction needs to make financial sense.”
Klarna’s reach is more global than Affirm’s, but he made a big push to the US, telling TechCrunch last April that the US and Germany represent the biggest markets, but the US is “always winning and often the largest quarterly.”
Landing Walmart as a partner will undoubtedly only increase Klarna’s presence in the US, and retailers are the world’s largest revenue, reporting $441.8 billion in the US alone last year.
Reporter’s note: How many statistics are Walmart’s US volumes, Klarna’s total GMV was removed after publication and deleted after publication at the company’s request.
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