Who's winning the BNPL race in Europe & the US? | SiftedKlarna, the buy now pay later fintech, saw its customer base grow faster than any of its European and US rivals last year — putting the company in a strong position ahead of a rumoured public listing.The Swedish fintech recorded 8m mobile downloads in Europe alone last year, while its closest rival Clearpay got just shy of 1m, according to data from Apptopia.Klarna also topped the leaderboard in the US in 2020, raking up a further 8.5m downloads after years of struggling stateside.Mobile app downloads* offer a good proxy for customer adoption in the buy now pay later (BNPL) space, which allows shoppers to defer payments on goods at no cost.Despite Klarna’s lead, it will need to stay abreast of key developments in the BNPL space.First, it is up against some big tech companies like PayPal, Amazon and American Express, who all recently launched 0% ‘installment’ payment options. Indeed, PayPal was the most downloaded app last year according to a recent Sifted analysis (although its target audience is older than Klarna’s).
