Klarna, Affirm present how costly fintech progress could be

Now equal in worth with Affirm, what can we be taught from the Swedish large’s first half of the 12 months?

Simply how profitable is the purchase now, pay later (BNPL) market? New information from Klarna and up to date earnings outcomes from Affirm make it clear that constructing a world enterprise within the fintech area is much from cheap.

The 2 corporations, Affirm American and Klarna Swedish, are among the many most useful gamers within the BNPL market at this time. Each lately reported monetary outcomes.

At this time we’re taking a look at Affirm’s earnings for the second calendar quarter of 2022 and Klarna’s for the primary half of the identical 12 months and asking ourselves what we are able to glean from every dataset. (And, hear, this can be a little bit of a slog. If you wish to belief our math and skip the forex conversions, simply scroll on all the way down to the “Why does BNPL lose a lot cash?” part.)

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Remember the fact that Klarna was lately repriced all the best way all the way down to $6.7 billion in its newest funding spherical. At this time earlier than the opening bell, per Yahoo Finance, Affirm was price $6.74 billion. The 2 corporations quickly sporting the identical valuation signifies that now we have a firmer basis to check them than we normally would possibly. We’ll first discuss their outcomes individually after which in distinction to 1 one other and their shared worth.