Swedish buy now, pay later giant Klarna is cutting its customer services team in Germany and Sweden. 250 employees working on customer support in these markets have been offered a job on equal terms to their current contracts at a new employer, Foundever, where they would continue to provide services for Klarna.
“A portion of our team will be transitioning to work at Foundever instead of Klarna, on equal terms to current contracts, to work in a dedicated customer services environment,” a spokesperson for the fintech told Sifted.
"In cases where someone does not want to transfer, their previous role at Klarna will no longer exist," the spokesperson said.
The majority of Klarna’s customer services team will stay with the company, and it has no plans to transfer employees in other markets to Foundever, the company confirmed to Sifted.
Foundever is a Miami-headquartered company that handles customer services for a range of businesses and has more than 170k employees and call centres across the world.
There is a bonus available to employees that accept the new job offer within two weeks, the company said.
Swedish website Breakit was the first to report on the news.
The news represents the third time that Klarna has slimmed its payroll in the last 15 months. It was the first European fintech to announce layoffs back in May last year, when it cut 10% of its workforce. That was around 650 people. Then in September last year, it laid off another 100 people.
Record-high interest rates and the cost of living crisis have weighed on Klarna’s business model. In February this year it posted its biggest-ever annual loss, of SEK10.4bn ($1bn) in the 12 months to December 31 2022, up 47% from SEK7.1bn ($680m) in 2021.
Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski previously said that the fintech is "on track" to return to monthly profitability "this year" at the company's first quarter results in May.
Klarna is expected to publish its H1 2023 results in the coming weeks.
*This article was updated after publication to say that Siemiatkowski said the fintech is "on track" to return to monthly profitability "this year" at its first quarter results, having previously stated "the second half of 2023."
