Klarna cuts jobs a second time after CEO said layoffs were done

Four months after it slashed around 10 per cent of its global workforce, Klarna is now planning another round of layoffs.

The ‘buy now, pay later’ giant shared the news in a video call to employees on Monday, as reported by Swedish news site SvD.

The news comes after a rocky nine months for the fintech – it saw losses more than triple in the first half of the year, its valuation slashed by 85 per cent and has already let go of around 700 people.

The company’s chief operating officer Camilla Giesecke relayed the news of this second round of layoffs by saying it has to make more cuts in some departments to “reflect the more focused nature of today’s Klarna”, according to Sifted.

This decision comes just three weeks after CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski told Bloomberg that the company’s focus was shifting from growth to profitability, and that the company could now ‘move on’ following the job cuts.

Klarna said in a statement to AltFi, “This is not ‘another’ round of job cuts, but instead a reorganisation of a small department”.

Citing his 17 years of experience as CEO, he said the team “felt that we really aspired to make sure that it was one big effort [so] we could create certainty for all our employees.”

In this next round of layoffs, fewer than 100 employees will be affected globally, the company confirmed to Sifted. 

Klarna’s revised budget now only has the capacity for around 6,000 employees, sources told SvD, which confirmed that the video call on Monday involved around 500 employees across three departments, including IT and recruiting,

In the first round of layoffs, around 10 per cent of the company’s then 7,000 employees were laid off.

A Klarna spokesperson told AltFi that “during the summer, we appointed a new COO, and it is natural that a new manager makes changes, which is what is happening now”. 

23 September: The article has been updated to reflect Klarna's response to comment request after the article's publication. The article had previously indicated there was a video message, rather than a video call. The article has also been updated to include a new quote from a Klarna spokesperson.