The Swedish “buy now, pay later” pioneer said Tuesday that its new design would help users find the items they want by using more advanced AI recommendation algorithms, while merchants will be able to target customers more effectively.
Rafael Henrique | SOPA Images | LightRocket via Getty Images
Klarna on Wednesday announced a global partnership with Uber to power payments for the ride-hailing giant’s Uber and Uber Eats apps.
The partnership will see the Swedish financial technology firm added as a payment option in the U.S., Germany and Sweden, Klarna said in a statement.
In those countries, Klarna will roll out its “Pay Now” option in the two apps, which lets customers pay off an order instantly in one click. Users will be able to track all their Uber purchases in the Klarna app.
The company will also offer an additional payment option for Uber users in Sweden and Germany, allowing users to bundle purchases into a single, interest-free payment that gets removed from their monthly salary.
Interestingly, the company isn’t rolling out installment-based “buy now, pay later” plans, arguably Uber’s most popular service offering, on its platforms.
Sebastian Siemiatkowski, CEO and co-founder of Klarna, said in a statement Wednesday that the deal represented a “significant milestone” for the company.
“Consumers can Pay Now quickly and securely in full, which already accounts for over one third of Klarna’s global volumes, and more easily manage their finances in one place,” Siemiatkowski said.
Klarna declined to disclose the financial terms of its deal with Uber.
Big pre-IPO merchant win
The Uber deal marks one of the most significant merchant wins for Klarna as of late and comes as the European fintech giant is rumored to be gearing up for a blockbuster initial public offering that could value the firm at just north of $20 billion.
Klarna began having detailed discussions with investment banks to work on an IPO that could happen as early as the third quarter, Bloomberg News reported in February, citing unnamed sources familiar with the matter.
CNBC could not independently verify the accuracy of the report. Klarna has said that it doesn’t comment on market speculation.
Such a market flotation would mark a turnaround for a company that saw $38.9 billion erased from its valuation in 2022 when deteriorating macroeconomic conditions stoked by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine caused a reset of sky-high tech valuations.
Klarna reached an eye-watering $45.6 billion in a 2021 funding round led by SoftBank, before seeing its market value fall to $6.7 billion the following year in a so-called “down round.”
The firm recently launched a monthly subscription plan in the U.S. to lock in “power users” ahead of its anticipated IPO.
The product is called Klarna Plus and costs $7.99 per month. Klarna Plus enables users to get service fees waived, earn double rewards points and access curated discounts from partners, such as Nike and Instacart.
Last year, Klarna reported its first quarterly profit in four years after cutting its credit losses by 56%.
The company posted an operating profit of 130 million Swedish krona (roughly $11.7 million) in the third quarter of 2023, swinging to a profit for a loss of 2 billion Swedish krona (roughly $183.6 million) in the same period a year earlier.
Buy now, pay later boom
Klarna is one of many “buy now, pay later” services that allow users to pay off their purchases over a period of monthly installments.
The payment method has become increasingly popular among consumers who are making online and in-person shopping purchases. It also can be an alternative to credit cards charging interest and high fees.
However, it has also stoked concerns about the affordability of such services, and whether it is in fact encouraging some consumers — particularly younger people — to spend more than they can afford.
In the U.K., the government has proposed draft laws to regulate the “buy now, pay later” industry.
The U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has previously said that it plans to subject “buy now, pay later” lenders to the same oversight as credit card companies.
Meanwhile, the European Union last year passed a revised version of its Consumer Credit Directive to include “buy now, pay later” services under the scope of the rules.
For its part, Klarna has defended the “buy now, pay later” model, arguing that it offers customers a cheaper way to access credit compared with traditional credit cards and consumer loans.
The company also said it welcomes regulation of “buy now, pay later” products.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent speaks to reporters outside the West Wing after doing a television interview on the North Lawn of the White House on March 13, 2025 in Washington, DC.
Andrew Harnik | Getty Images
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Wednesday the sell-off in the stock market is due more to a sharp pullback in the biggest technology stocks instead of the protectionist policies coming from the Trump administration.
“I’m trying to be Secretary of Treasury, not a market commentator. What I would point out is that especially the Nasdaq peaked on DeepSeek day so that’s a Mag 7 problem, not a MAGA problem,” Bessent said on Bloomberg TV Wednesday evening.
Bessent was referring to Chinese AI startup DeepSeek, whose new language models sparked a rout in U.S. technology stocks in late January. The emergence of DeepSeek’s highly competitive and potentially much cheaper models stoked doubts about the billions that the big U.S. tech companies are spending on AI.
The so-called Magnificent 7 stocks — Apple, Amazon, Tesla, Alphabet, Microsoft, Meta and Nvidia — started selling off drastically, pulling the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite into correction territory. The tech-heavy benchmark is down about 13% from its record high reached on December 16.
However, the secretary downplayed the impact from President Donald Trump’s steep tariffs, which caught many investors off guard and fueled fears of a re-acceleration in inflation, slower economic growth and even a recession. Many investors have blamed the tariff rollout for driving the S&P 500 briefly into correction territory from its record reached in late February. Wall Street defines a correction as a drop of 10% from a recent high.
S&P 500, YTD
Trump signed an aggressive “reciprocal tariff” policy at the White House Wednesday evening, slapping duties of at least 10% and even higher for some countries. The actions sparked a huge sell-off in the stock market overnight, with the S&P 500 futures declining nearly 4% and the blue-chip Dow Jones Industrial Average shedding 1,100 points. The losses will likely but the S&P 500 back into correction territory in Thursday’s session.
“It’s going to be fine if we put the best economic conditions in place,” Bessent said in a separate interview on Fox Wednesday evening. “If you go back and look, the stock market actually peaked on the [DeepSeek] Chinese AI announcement. So a lot of what we have seen has been just an idiosyncratic tech sell-off.”
A Newsmax booth broadcasts as attendees try out the guns on display at the National Rifle Association (NRA) annual convention in Houston, Texas, U.S. May 29, 2022.
Callaghan O’hare | Reuters
Shares of conservative news channel Newsmax plunged more than 70% on Wednesday as its meteoric rise as a new public company proved to be short-lived.
The stock tumbled a whopping 72% in afternoon trading, following a 2,230% surge in Newsmax’s first two days of trading after debuting on the New York Stock Exchange. At one point, the rally gave the company a market capitalization of nearly $30 billion — surpassing the market cap of legacy media companies like Warner Bros. Discovery and Fox Corp.
Newsmax was listed on the NYSE via a so-called Regulation A offering, instead of a traditional IPO. Such an offering allows small companies to raise capital without undergoing the full SEC registration process. The primary focus is to sell to retail investors, in this case It was sold to approximately 30,000 retail investors.
The public offering indeed garnered the attention from retail traders, some of whom touted the stock as the “New GME” in online chatrooms. GME refers to the meme stock GameStop, which made Wall Street history in 2021 by its speculative trading boom.
Newsmax has a small “float,” or shares available for trading. Less than 6% of Newsmax shares, or 7.5 million shares out of a total of 128 million fully diluted shares, are available for public trading.
The conservative TV news outlet has seen its ratings rise with the election of President Donald Trump and other prominent Republicans — although it still falls behind the dominant Fox News. Overall, Newsmax ranks in the top 20 among cable network average viewership in both prime time and daytime, Nielsen said.
Check out the companies making headlines in midday trading. Tesla – Shares jumped more than 5%. Politico , citing three Trump insiders, reported President Donald Trump told members of his inner circle that Tesla CEO Elon Musk could leave his current role in the coming weeks. Amazon – Shares of the e-commerce and cloud giant popped more than 2%. The New York Times , citing three people familiar, reported that Amazon has put in a bid to acquire TikTok. The video app is staring down an April 5 deadline to part with its Chinese owner or face a ban in the U.S. Rivian Automotive – Shares of the electric vehicle maker slid more than 5%. Rivian said that it delivered 8,640 vehicles for the first quarter , marking a 36% drop in deliveries compared to a year ago. However, that figure exceeded the consensus estimate of 8,200, per Visible Alpha. nCino – The cloud banking firm’s stock pulled back more than 20% after nCino reported weaker-than-expected fourth-quarter earnings and soft guidance for the first quarter and full year. For the fourth quarter, nCino posted adjusted earnings of 12 cents per share, below the 19 cents per share that analysts polled by FactSet were expecting. The stock tumbled more than 30% in the premarket, which KBW said was ” overdone .” BlackBerry – The software and communications stock tumbled 6%. BlackBerry guided for fiscal first-quarter revenue of between $107 million to $115 million, lower than the $124.6 million analysts had expected, per FactSet. However, both BlackBerry’s fourth-quarter adjusted earnings and revenue exceeded consensus estimates. Newsmax – The stock sank more than 45%, giving up some of the big gains it reaped following its debut on the New York Stock Exchange Monday. The conservative cable news network surged 179% in the previous session and 700% on its first official trading day. Trump Media & Technology Group – Shares dropped 5% after Trump Media in a securities filing disclosed the possibility of a significant stock sale , including by insider shareholders such as the president’s trust. Petco – Shares of the pet goods retailer soared about 15% after CEO Joel Anderson purchased almost 1.6 million shares, according to a recent filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. CoreWeave – The stock rose more than 8%, extending its recent gains. On Tuesday, shares of the Nvidia-backed cloud computing company climbed nearly 42% . The recent advances follow a rocky debut for CoreWeave late last week. Nvidia – The chipmaker added roughly 1% ahead of the April 2 tariff announcement. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang recently downplayed any negative impact from U.S. tariffs. The company’s chips are mostly made in Taiwan, but some of its systems are manufactured in other countries, such as Mexico and the U.S. Scotts Miracle-Gro – The lawn care stock jumped nearly 5% on the heels of Truist’s upgrade to buy from hold . Truist said the stock can benefit as economic uncertainty pushes consumers to shift spending from travel to the home. — CNBC’s Sarah Min, Alex Harring, Lisa Kailai Han and Michelle Fox contributed reporting.