Klarna is a very special company.

Klarna pays is a blog post that I wrote in 2022 that is at the time of writing, in October 2023, still valid.

I keep a public log of articles about Klarna on the net. The log lists the latest-published article at the top, with the rest below in descending order.

For a bit more context, below is a chronological news thread about Klarna with content. The thread is sorted descendingly (oldest post at the top, latest one at the bottom):

Table of contents

• 2023-10-26: Unionen announce strike action against Klarna
• 2023-10-27
  • Second round of moving employees to outside companies
  • The gist of Klarna
  • The Swedish Consumer Agency say Klarna are breaking Swedish law by providing customers erroneous information
• 2023-10-30
  • The threat of strike against Klarna continues to grow
  • The expert: tech giants afraid of the growing influence of unions
• 2023-10-31: Klarna have asked people who will strike to return their computers
• 2023-11-04
  • Historic strike called off after Klarna agrees to collective bargaining agreement
• 2023-11-08: Siemiatkowski (Klarna CEO) used Orwell's 'Animal Farm' against unions in employee talk
• 2023-11-10: Klarna may aim to launch on the UK stock exchange, resulting in doubling of company evaluation
• 2023-11-30: Klarna is listed on the Swedish 'shame list'
• 2024-01-10: Klarna coaxes young people to Cyprus - for Liam, this resulted in starvation wages and harrassment
• 2024-03-09: Klarna’s reclusive co-founder buys up shares using opaque structure
• 2024-10-23: Klarna power struggles as they get ready for IPO
• 2024-10-24: Klarna boardroom fracas ousts Mikael Walther
• 2024-12-14: Klarna CEO says the company stopped hiring a year ago because AI 'can already do all of the jobs'
• 2024-12-18: Klarna plan to test employees for drugs and alcohol

2023-10-26: Unionen announce strike action against Klarna

Unionen announce strike action against Klarna

Klarna have published their own anti-union propaganda:

2023-10-27

Second round of moving employees to outside companies

Klarna transfers another 500 jobs globally to Foundever and Accenture

To quote Laura Palmer: it's happening again.

This time, it's even more otherworldly than in Twin Peaks. From the article:

The decision to implement a second round of outsourcing was communicated to affected personnel on Monday afternoon. A calendar invite was sent out to affected UK staff 20 minutes before a meeting to announce the changes, according to a person with knowledge of the changes.

“It was just announced that anyone on this call was going to be outsourced and it's going to be a great opportunity for you to move to a new company. And then that was it,” the person tells Sifted, adding that the team has just over a month’s notice before the move happens.

Another person with knowledge of the changes says that the meeting itself was confusing, and that there were a lot of people unsure if they were actually being outsourced or being informed of the teams affected.

“The whole handling in this has been, in my opinion, absolutely terrible. A lot of the questions that we had remained unanswered, there is a lot of uncertainty.”

Welly-well! Little wonder that Klarna are eager to not have the pesky unions involved. Hulk gets less dollars due to pesky unions providing workers with job security? Hulk angry!

Billionaires today act like children who get hurt from handling a toy the wrong way: the toy ends up hurting the child, so the child instantly tries to damage the toy in retaliation.

Too bad human beings aren't toys. Too bad for people like Sebastian Siemiatkowski, Niklas Adalberth, and Victor Jacobsson, that is. They founded Klarna.

The gist of Klarna

I'll quote my own blog post about Klarna:

In 2021, Siemiatkowski bragged that part of Klarna's success is because of financing via savings accounts and the fact that Klarna pays lower interest rates than a major bank like Crédit Agricole. This is due to the fact that Sweden has a higher credit score than France.

The average purchase via Klarna is 75 USD. In 2020 and 2021, Klarna sent 72,000 payment injunctions to the Swedish Enforcement Authority. This means 72,000 payments were not met in time.

The best customer is the one that doesn't pay at once, but gets a reminder and then a debt collection claim.

Niklas Adalberth, Klarna founder, at an investment conference in 2014.

In 2020, the record number of Swedes who'd applied for debt relief was broken. The problem was particularly big for people between 18 and 30 years old.

The Swedish Consumer Agency say Klarna are breaking Swedish law by providing customers erroneous information

Konsumentverket: Klarna vilseleder sina kunder

Johanna Myrin, Lawyer at the Swedish Consumer Agency, says Klarna blame individual workers, which is inadequate and erroneous behaviour. Klarna lie to customers, for example, when saying they need to submit a registration number from the National Board for Customer Disputes (ARN) in order to be able to submit a case to Klarna.

2023-10-30

The threat of strike against Klarna continues to grow

Strejkhotet mot Klarna växer

The conflict between the unions and Klarna is growing. The SSR Academic Union (Akademikerunionen SSR) also now announces industrial action against the payment service company in sympathy with the unions Unionen and Sveriges Ingenjörer.

The expert: tech giants afraid of the growing influence of unions

Experten: Techjättarna rädda för fackets ökade inflytande

According to Charlotta Brynger, political scientist and expert on business culture, it is a matter of American business culture, born of notions of risk-taking individualism, colliding with the consensus-seeking pragmatism of the Swedish model.

''Notions of' is the key term.

This is more along the terms as noted by James Madison, North American president to-be^[1]:

Landholders ought to have a share in the government, to support these invaluable interests and to balance and check the other. They ought to be so constituted as to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority. The senate, therefore, ought to be this body; and to answer these purposes, they ought to have permanency and stability.

2023-10-31: Klarna have asked people who will strike to return their computers

Uppgifter: Klarna vill att de som planerar att strejka ska lämna in sina datorer

In other words, Klarna I hope Unionen, the main driving union to support the strike, sues Klarna. That is actually on the table.

2023-11-04

Historic strike called off after Klarna agrees to collective bargaining agreement

Historic strike called off after Klarna agrees to collective bargaining agreement

It took four unions to call on a strike for Klarna to give in to demands. For now.

“I am pleased that we have struck a deal which combines Klarna’s agility with the clarity of the Swedish model. I am convinced that we will benefit from this deal and that Klarna will be able to contribute to making the Swedish model stronger from the inside,” Klarna CEO and co-founder Sebastian Siemiatkowski said in a statement.

Remember, Siemiatkowski and his co-founder friends made this crisis occur. They've fired people en masse while transferring people because of greed.

Siemiatkowski is probably truly not pleased: the unions partly getting what they want is what Klarna have fought against for more than six months.

Klarna still won't deal with Unionen, the biggest union in this mess. They're the ones who've mainly directed the fight for workers rights, against Klarna and their propaganda.

2023-11-08: Siemiatkowski (Klarna CEO) used Orwell's 'Animal Farm' against unions in employee talk

According to Kim Öberg, former Senior Software Engineer at Klarna, Sebastian Siemiatkowski (the Klarna CEO) allegorised during a very recent meeting with employees.

To the outside world, Siemiatkowski's company says it's 'happy' to 'strike a deal' with unions according to the 'Swedish model'.

To his company, Siemiatkowski allegorises in a way where he believes unions equate fascism and Klarna is the underdog, continuously striving for freedom.

As Öberg mentions, this not only points to how rotten Klarna are, but what Klarna actually feels about unions and worker rights; Siemiatkowski being the CEO, saying these things, is actually fascism. Remember, capitalism is fascist in structure: the closer you are to the top, hierarchically speaking, the more power you have.

In other words, Siemiatkowski's allegory is not only completely mistaken and wrong, but a clear sign of what Klarna actually is about: fascism and not worker rights.

Öberg mentions that Siemiatkowski praises Akavia, a union that didn't join the strike notice.

2023-11-10: Klarna may aim to launch on the UK stock exchange, resulting in doubling of company evaluation

Buy Now Pay Later giant Klarna strides towards $15bn float

Let me graciously quote myself in 2022:

According to Klarna's Q1 2022 report, their income increased by 20%. Their main problem is, their costs also increased, three times as fast as their income. Their loss is 2.6 billion Swedish crowns (approximately 260 million USD) in three months. That's 340,000 USD per hour. Bankruptcy is close.

Obviously, they didn't go bankrupt, which isn't because they're suave business people. It's simply because they're managing to keep their debt ship afloat.

According to an article^[2] in Dagens Industri:

According to Holdings, the largest owner of Klarna is the American venture capital company Sequoia with 21.8 percent. Second is Danish Heartland with 10 percent and third is CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski with 6.9 percent. Calculated on the valuation mentioned before the IPO, the CEO's shares are worth just over SEK 11 billion.

In other words, it seems even more that Klarna has swept their 'union debacle' (allegorised by Siemiatkowski as a fight against fascism^[3]) under the rug to further bolster their value as they continue to bleed money.

Money that's made off the debts of other people. When those people can't afford to pay, they lose; when Klarna can't afford to pay, they win. Somewhat.

When Klarna (which is a bank, remember) are threatened by extreme loss, their value isn't decided by what they have, but what they can accrue.

Capitalism is a losing game; the people who make the most money just don't understand it (for sources, ask the climate catastrophe).

2023-11-30: Klarna is listed on the Swedish 'shame list'

The Shame List - the companies that most people complain about

In Sweden, there's Råd och Rön, an independent organisation that rates products and companies. Every year they publish an annual report of companies that have been reported to deserve shame.

In 2023, Klarna were reported 132 times in 2023 (not counting December) and again made it on the shame list.

2024-01-10: Klarna coaxes young people to Cyprus - for Liam, this resulted in starvation wages and harrassment

https://arbetet.se/2024/01/10/klarna-lockar-unga-till-cypern-for-liam-blev-det-svaltlon-och-trakasserier/

Arbetet and Arbetsvärlden have been in contact with several people who, until recently, worked with Klarna at Foundever in Larnaca. Most people are afraid to talk openly and hardly want to appear in an article even as anonymous. You are afraid of being sued or to never get a new job. They bear witness to a culture of silence where no one is allowed to talk to anyone else. No one should question. If you do that, swear words and abuse will follow.

Several people say they have been monitored and clocked when visiting the toilet. And that visits to the toilet can result in deductions from the monthly "pep talk" with a team leader. It must be taken care of during the break.

When Liam Bladström and his colleagues finally had enough of abuse, they tried to contact Klarna. They first turned to the inspectors, without being heard. During a lunch break shortly afterwards, they wrote directly to Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski via his Instagram account.

- We talked about how the situation was in Cyprus, how bad we felt and how we had tried to get Foundever to act. Klarna has a responsibility. Unfortunately, he never answered us, says Liam Bladström.

Neither Klarna nor Foundever are available for an interview. They also do not give clear answers regarding the low salary, the lack of overtime pay, sick pay, or about the harassing managers in Cyprus. For the employees who switched from Klarna in Sweden to Foundever, however, the outsourcing has been positive, according to Klarna's press manager Amanda Larsson.

- Foundever is a carefully selected partner that shares Klarna's ethos and commitment to its teams. The move has been well received by the employees we spoke to, for example, they have told us that they got more opportunities for professional development, she writes in an email.

2024-03-09: Klarna’s reclusive co-founder buys up shares using opaque structure

Yeah^[4]:

Victor Jacobsson, the reclusive co-founder at the heart of Klarna’s boardroom conflict, has bought up a stake in the company via special purpose vehicles to become one of its largest shareholders ahead of an expected initial public offering. The precise size of Jacobsson’s ownership is unclear, in part because he holds shares through various corporate entities. However, his stake is worth hundreds of millions of dollars and may exceed that of chief executive Sebastian Siemiatkowski’s roughly 8 per cent stake, according to people familiar with the matter.

2024-10-23: Klarna power struggles as they get ready for IPO

There's a lot happening behind the scenes at Klarna. The CEO may get kicked out soon. Who knows? The Financial Times reported this back on 4 October^[5]:

Klarna’s board has agreed to oust a key ally of co-founder Victor Jacobsson, underlining a deep governance rift at the Swedish buy-now pay-later company as it prepares to go public, according to people with knowledge of the process. The directors recently agreed to remove Mikael Walther from the eight-person board, pending shareholders approval, the people said.

The move to oust Walther from Klarna’s board is the latest development in a power struggle between the two co-founders. At stake is the extent of Siemiatkowski’s influence over the company after an initial public offering, a person familiar with the matter previously said. Further details on the reasons for Walther’s ousting could not immediately be established.

Walther’s ousting would allow Siemiatkowski to consolidate his influence ahead of an IPO that could value the company between $15bn and $20bn.

Also^[6]:

The board has had a law firm investigate Walther and after that deemed him no longer suitable. According to the news site Breakit, which has published both letters, the board believes, among other things, that Walther has threatened to block various decisions, such as setting up a holding company in the UK.

Walther has rejected the allegations and urged the owners to vote for him to stay. In a comment to Bloomberg, he says the investigation has been used as a tactic in an ongoing dispute about how the company should be governed in the long term.

As recently as last winter, the owners got rid of another board member, Sequoia's representative Matthew Miller. Miller had to go after another power struggle, where he failed to get rid of chairman Mike Moritz.

2024-10-24: Klarna boardroom fracas ousts Mikael Walther

So called late-stage capitalist TV series like Succession seem badly memetic in comparison with this crap:

The move comes weeks after Walther’s fellow board members had voted to oust him. Walther urged investors to vote against the board’s decision, which he said had come after he challenged governance decisions including a bonus plan that he claimed could hand Klarna Chief Executive Officer Sebastian Siemiatkowski as much as $35 billion in the coming years.^[7]

2024-12-14: Klarna CEO says the company stopped hiring a year ago because AI 'can already do all of the jobs'

From a Business Insider article^[8]:

In an interview with Bloomberg TV, Siemiatkowski said he was "of the opinion that AI can already do all of the jobs that we as humans do."

If this were true, I'd love to see Sebastian Siemiatkowski leave Klarna ASAP because he's just made himself redundant. No? Still there? Yeah.

Though Klarna's website is advertising open positions at the time of writing, a spokesperson told Business Insider the company wasn't "actively recruiting" to expand its workforce. Rather, the spokesperson said, Klarna is backfilling "some essential roles," primarily in engineering.

I can personally vouch for this being absolute scheisse; I know for a fact that Klarna have actively hired people as late as in the past 72 hours and they're still at hiring people.

First, Klarna used layoffs to boost their stock value, then they lie about how they use artificial intelligence. Tsk, tsk. Do they still keep wage slaves abroad working for third-party companies as in #2024-01-10 Klarna coaxes young people to Cyprus - for Liam, this resulted in starvation wages and harrassment?

2024-12-18: Klarna plan to test employees for drugs and alcohol

In January 2025, Klarna plan to test employees for drugs and alcohol as part of their North American IPO ramp-up^[9].

From the article, using Firefox auto-translation services, so this may contain errors:

The announcement comes after Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski brought the idea of random drug tests to the staff during an all-time-hand meeting in September. He said that the company needed to introduce some additional security measures because Klarna, as a growing financial institution, attracted a greater interest from “less gratifying parts of society”: “Criminals, various hacker groups, and so on,” as emerges from a record of the meeting that BI is available.

'Less gratifying parts of society', you say? Let's re-read #2023-10-27#The gist of Klarna:

The best customer is the one that doesn't pay at once, but gets a reminder and then a debt collection claim.

Niklas Adalberth, Klarna founder, at an investment conference in 2014.

Will Klarna protect themselves from Siemiatkowski and his ilk? Nah. They'll just go on.