Klarna: Getting More Ambitious(節選)

Klarna：雄心愈壯(節選)

A payments unicorn seeks to become a dray-horse bank

獨角獸支付公司欲成傳統零售銀行

There is a through-the-looking-glass quality to the blue-lit tunnel that leads into the headquarters of Klarna, a Swedish online-payments firm. And there is something back-to-front about the company itself. It is a startup firm that grew up in Europe, and is now seeking to expand into America – the reverse of the usual pattern. Unlike most tech unicorns galloping to expand their market share, it already makes a profit. Even more strikingly, it plans to move from an area of financial ferment – mobile payments – into the sterile old business of retail banking. Investors are giddy about its plans, however unusual: a funding round last year valued the firm, whose name is Swedish for “getting clearer”, at $2.25 billion, up by almost a billion on the year before.考生如果怕自己錯過考試成績查詢的話，可以 免費預約短信提醒，屆時會以短信的方式提醒大家報名和考試時間。

Klarna’s business “is quite basic”, says Sebastian Siemiatkowski, its founder and boss. Some 65,000 online merchants have so far hired it to run their checkouts. Its main appeal, for both retailers and their customers, is the simplicity of its system. Shoppers do not have to dole out credit-card details or remember a new password. Instead, they can simply give an e-mail and a delivery address, and leave the payment to be sorted out later. (Klarna pays the retailer in the meantime, and bears the risk that shoppers will not stump up in the end – something few other payment firms do.) Customers who have previously used one Klarna-run checkout are recognised when they visit another, further reducing the need to fill out online forms. All this hugely increases the “conversion” rate – the proportion of customers who actually make a purchase after putting an item into their online “basket”.

Like many fintech firms, Klarna believes that its algorithms do a better job of identifying creditworthy customers than the arthritic systems used by conventional financial firms. It relies on the e-mail and delivery addresses supplied, as well as the size and type of purchase, the device used, time of day and other variables. This not only allows it to bear the risk that customers fail to pay when Klarna bills them, but also to offer them extended payment plans, for a fee. These loans have higher margins than the cut-throat online-payment business – although the giants of the industry, such as PayPal, are experimenting with similar offerings.

Klarna handled sales of roughly $10 billion in 2014 (compared with PayPal’s $235 billion), generating $300m in revenue, all in Europe. (It has not yet made public figures for last year.) It handles 40% of online payments in Sweden. In 2014 it bought a German firm, Sofort, expanding its presence there. It thinks it can continue to grow in Europe, but its main focus now is America, where it launched in September.

通過那藍光照亮的隧道進入瑞典網絡支付公司Klarna的總部時，頗有走進《艾麗斯鏡中奇遇》的感覺。這家公司還有幾分顛倒行事的味道。作為在歐洲成長的創業公司，Klarna正努力擴展至美國——與通常的模式相反。有別于一心擴展市場份額的大多數高科技獨角獸，Klarna已實現盈利。更引人注目的是，該公司計劃從移動支付這一金融熱土轉移至零售銀行這項貧瘠的傳統業務。無論該計劃有多么不同尋常，投資者卻為之興奮若狂：這家在瑞典語中名為“愈加清晰”的公司去年一輪融資的估值為22.5億美元，較前年上升近十億。

Klarna的業務“相當簡單”，其創始人及總裁塞巴斯蒂安·西米亞特科夫斯基(Sebastian Siemiatkowski)表示。迄今已有約6.5萬網上商戶利用Klarna收款。對于零售商及其顧客而言，該平臺的引人之處主要是系統簡便。購物者無需輸入信用卡的詳細信息或記住新密碼，而僅需提供電子郵箱和送貨地址，余下的支付過程平臺會自行處理。(Klarna會立即向零售商支付貨款，承擔購物者不一定最終付款的風險——其他支付公司很少這么做。)曾使用Klarna支付的顧客在光顧利用此平臺的其他商戶時會被識別出來，進一步減免填寫在線表格的手續。所有這一切大大提升了“轉化率”——顧客把商品放入網上“購物車”后實際購買的比率。

跟許多金融科技公司一樣，Klarna認為其算法比傳統金融機構采用的僵硬體系更能辨別信譽良好的客戶。除了客戶提供的電郵及收貨地址，該算法還運用顧客購物的金額和種類、所用設備、時段及其他變量作分析。因此，Klarna不但能承擔風險，無懼寄送賬單時顧客賴賬，還可向顧客收取一定費用以提供延期付款的服務。相比競爭激烈的網上支付業務，這類貸款的利潤率更高，但該行業的各巨頭，如PayPal，也正嘗試提供同類產品。

2014年，Klarna處理的交易額約為100億美元(PayPal的數字為2350億美元)，創造了三億美元的收入，全部來自歐洲。(公司去年的數據尚未公開。)Klarna處理瑞典40%的在線支付。在2014年購入德國公司Sofort后，Klarna把業務擴展至德國。該公司認為可繼續在歐洲拓展，但目前的主要焦點是美國。它已于去年9月登陸美國市場。

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