Klarna
Klarna is a global leader in payment and purchasing services, with more than 150 million active customers, more than 500,000 merchants in 45 countries and more than 5,000 employees. Klarna, founded in Sweden in 2005, aims to make payment as easy, secure and, above all, frictionless as possible. The company is an essential cooperation partner in global online commerce and is financed by international investors.
It is obvious that Klarna has a significant impact on economic, social and environmental decisions both in its own group of companies and in its networked environment. It goes without saying that this great influence goes hand in hand with a great responsibility with regard to a sustainable economy.
In view of the documents submitted and the accompanying research, Klarna focuses on sustainable development in many respectives – both within the company and in its supply chain. Focus areas such as Circular Economy with the involvement of the many partners, merchants and other external stakeholders play a special role. Klarna uses established sustainability management tools and processes to integrate the sustainability triad of economy, ecology and social issues into its own business model.
The company does good and talks about it. It makes its own sustainability activities transparent. It sets an example and, through its own sustainability programs and awards, encourages its stakeholders to engage with sustainability issues and implement their own sustainability projects.All this makes Klarna a worthy candidate for the PLUS X AWARD Sustainability.
In the debate on sustainable management, three possible guiding strategies are discussed: Efficiency, consistency and sufficiency. In brief, efficiency means using fewer units of resources per unit of service, consistency means using technologies and structures that are compatible with nature, and sufficiency means reducing unsustainable consumption. However, for a company whose business model is built on increasing consumption intensity, the requirements of a sufficiency strategy seem to block the PLUS X AWARD Sustainability award.
Nevertheless, we believe that Klarna has proven through its activities to date that doing business in a way that is fit for the grandchildren is a crucial criterion within its business strategy.
Moreover, Klarna’s connections to the multitude of stakeholders gives it highly effective leverage to promote knowledge about the need, requirements and opportunities for sustainable consumption.
Based on the efforts already made and in view of the great transformation potential, we are therefore in favor of the PLUS X AWARD for Sustainability in the categories of Future Security and Strategy. We combine this with the wish that Klarna understands and uses this award not only as a distinction for what it has already achieved, but also as a call to intensify its own sustainability efforts and to use its own market position to actively drive the need for a transformation towards a sustainable economy, both internally at Klarna and with external stakeholders.
