DIGITAL ASSETS
Sebastian Siemiatkowski spent years dismissing cryptocurrency as hype that could not deliver on its promises. The Klarna Co-founder and CEO made no secret of his scepticism, questioning whether blockchain technology could ever match the speed, security and scale that mainstream payments demand.
Now, he seems to have changed his mind. Klarna has launched KlarnaUSD, a stablecoin that runs on Tempo, the blockchain platform owned by Stripe and venture capital firm Paradigm, putting the Swedish buy-now-pay-later provider – which handles US $ 118bn in annual gross merchandise value across 114 million customers – into direct competition with the card networks it has been chipping away at for over a decade. The GENIUS Act in the United States has established regulatory requirements for stablecoin issuers, giving financial institutions clearer rules to work within. McKinsey estimates annual stablecoin transaction volumes at US $ 27tn, a number large enough to pull payment processors away from traditional banking rails and into blockchain territory.
Klarna CEO reverses crypto stance as blockchain infrastructure matures Sebastian’ s history with cryptocurrency has been one of public doubt. For years, he publicly questioned whether digital currencies could work at the scale and security levels required for mainstream payments.
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