Acquired has talked with Sebastian Siemiatkowski about the payments landscape and the history of Klarna. And good listen, or read if you prefer the transcript.
Many interesting comments, but a few I liked:
- Sebastian’s comment on doing the work when times are tough: “I’m not saying that it makes it easy because it’s not, it’s really difficult. Again, as I said, all the other things are true, but I’ve also come to some degree to say, this is it. This is what I trained for. I wanted to be in this difficult situation. I want to see if I can master this situation, if I can solve it, if I can resolve it in a good way. To some degree, I also started to cherish the fact that I have the privilege of being challenged to a level where it’s sweaty.”
- Also an interesting comment (not least in the shadow of today’s news that Klarna is selling its Checkout product) on how seeing that Klarna Checkout wasn’t as good as Adyen and Stripe internationally in 2015 led to the focus away from Checkout towards today’s focus.
- And, finally for this post, I liked the story about how the launch of a browser in the Klarna app helped Klarna compete with Afterpay in the US in 2019/2020 (when Afterpay had stronger momentum with merchants).
