Affirm Plunges As Rival, Klarna Secures Walmart BNPL Deal

Affirm Holdings shares tumbled in New York after CNBC reported that Swedish fintech rival Klarna will now be Walmart’s sole provider of „buy now, pay later” loans in the United States. That’s a negative for Affirm, which announced a BNPL partnership with Walmart in 2019.

Klarna wrote in a press release earlier that „it will be partnering with OnePay, a leading consumer finance app, to exclusively offer installment loans for purchases at Walmart in the United States.”

Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski called the deal a „game changer,” adding that it gives its AI-powered payments and commerce network platform massive access to millions of customers and a new avenue of expansion nationwide.

Klarna’s exclusive BNPL partnership with Walmart comes just days after the company filed an initial public offering prospectus and will test the IPO market that has been ice-cold for the last few years.

Bloomberg provided more color about Klarna’s financials:

The Stockholm-founded digital payments company’s revenue climbed 24% last year. Klarna had net income of $21 million on revenue of $2.81 billion for 2024, according to its filing Friday with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. The company has amassed 85 million customers around the world and 600,000 retail partners.

The deal is a big blow to Affirm. Traders dumped company shares, down 12% in New York in the first 15 minutes of trading, pushing shares into a bear market (-26% YTD).

Klarna will provide BNPL loans to Walmart customers at a time when Goldman Sachs has declared the big-box retailer the winner of the value wars among retailers.