You would have seen quite a bit of Klarna news in regard to...

You would have seen quite a bit of Klarna news in regard to their launch in Australia.

This usually features numbers in regard to how many merchants they have on board. However because they operate in more countries, there's never a disclosure of how many merchants they have in countries which also offer Afterpay.

I track these numbers via scraping the stores off the online store directories.

Here is what that picture looks like from this data over the past few months.


With the ghost card program in the US and AUS, all merchants are accessible, so an argument can be made that there is no need for a store directory. However Klarna lose money on its ghost card program and is still trying to sign up merchants in the US so it can earn money from them.

I thought it interesting they launched in AUS without any merchants signed up, so will be interesting to see what happens over the next few months in that space.

Also Klarna offer several financing products, and not all merchants offer the installment product so these numbers are a mix of all Klarna products.

Note the only market where Klarna is ahead is the UK, however Afterpay have had some big wins, both exclusive ones (M&S) and merchants which had previously offered Klarna (ASOS and Gymshark). Clearpays merchant growth has been steady and it's attracting merchants who haven't partnered with Klarna as well so it's approach is resonating with some.