From 5000 to 3800

AI is taking over more and more jobs at payment app Klarna

According to Klarna, AI has reduced the average processing time from eleven to two minutes.(Bild: Ascannio – stock.adobe.com)

Artificial intelligence is taking over more and more jobs at financial services provider Klarna. "About twelve months ago, we had around 5,000 jobs, now we only have around 3,800," said CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski in an interview on Tuesday. In the longer term, the workforce is expected to shrink to 2000 people.

However, Siemiatkowski told Reuters that the job cuts had been achieved almost exclusively through natural fluctuation and not through redundancies. His company has not hired anyone since September. For the foreseeable future, engineers will be recruited at most.

Klarna also announced that the AI used to process customer inquiries would perform the tasks of 700 human employees. At the same time, the average processing time has been reduced from eleven to two minutes. In return, turnover per employee has increased by 73 percent to the equivalent of 615,000 euros in the past twelve months.

Falling personnel costs
The Swedish group expects personnel costs to fall as a result of the smaller workforce, although the salaries of individual employees are likely to increase significantly. The company was an early adopter of generative AI in order to save costs and increase productivity.

Klarna also announced a 27 percent increase in turnover for the first half of the year to the equivalent of 1.17 billion euros on Tuesday. Profit amounted to a good 59 million euros.

When asked about a possible IPO of Klarna, Siemiatkowski said that a debut next year "sounds realistic". However, no decision had yet been made. The financial services provider is leaning towards a debut in the USA, but is also seriously considering some European options.