Global payments provider and shopping service, Klarna, announced some pretty spectacular growth numbers.
For the uninitiated, Klarna empowers shoppers with flexible payments solutions with retailers like Lenovo, Macy’s, Footlocker, Etsy, and thousands of other stores across multiple categories. Users can leverage buy-now-pay-later capabilities with four interest-free payments and no credit impact via the company’s instant approval process.
The company also leverages a rewards points system that allows consumers to accumulate points for gift cards. Fintechs like Klarna, Afterpay and Quontic have launched and grown award programs during the pandemic in an effort to compete with card issuers and win loyalty as popular travel-focused credit card rewards program wane in relevance.
Klarna’s BNPL capabilities and loyalty program are proving to be valuable operational drivers in the company’s pursuit of outsized growth and a looming initial public offering. The company shared that it is seeing “tremendous momentum in the US, including a record 15 million customers overall to kick off 2021.” In 2020, the company more than doubled the total number of users in the United States to 15 million. More than 1 million US customers have joined Klarna each month since October 2020.
The Klarna app is also driving massive user engagement, with 3.5 million monthly active users as of the end of December, an increase of 204% year over year. The app averaged 60,000 new daily downloads in December and was among the top 10 most downloaded shopping apps in the US during Q4 2020, according to Apptopia.
The company is putting this momentum to work with a 30-second ad during the Super Bowl on February 7th. The ad will feature actress and comedian Maya Rudolph and is the cornerstone of the company’s “The Four Quarter-Sized Cowboys” campaign.