Klarna CFO Niclas Neglén: Transaction Margin, AI and Growth
Klarna's transaction margin dollars rose 42% to US$446m in the second quarter of 2026, well ahead of revenue growth of 27% to US$1.04bn.
The Stockholm-founded payments company also posted net income of US$9m, against a US$53m loss in Q2 a year earlier.
Behind those figures is Niclas Neglén, CFO at Klarna since 2021, who took the neobank to the New York Stock Exchange in September 2025.
In August 2026 Klarna said Niclas would leave in early 2027, and in September Adyen named him its next CFO.
His final months are focused on margin quality, capital efficiency and a new accounting model for longer-term loans.
We would rather protect our risk-adjusted returns than chase margin or volume”
The leader behind the finance
Niclas spent 13 years in senior finance roles at General Electric and was CFO and COO for Europe, the Middle East and Asia at HSBC's private bank before joining Klarna.
As CFO he built the finance organisation that took the company public, pricing its shares at US$40 and valuing it at about US$15bn.
The stock has since fallen sharply, closing at US$14.73 on 19 August 2026 after Klarna cut its 2026 volume outlook.
That cut explains his strategy. Klarna now treats transaction margin dollars, rather than gross merchandise volume (GMV), as its north-star measure.
In August it lowered full-year GMV guidance to a total of US$149bn - US$151bn. The company said it was from more than $155bn, citing currency effects and weaker spending in Germany, its largest market by volume.
At the same time it raised transaction margin guidance to US$1.63bn- US$1.65bn, or about 1.09% of GMV.
“We would rather protect our risk-adjusted returns than chase margin or volume,” said Niclas Neglén, CFO, Klarna on an earnings call.
- Revenue: US$1.04bn in Q2 2026, up 27% year on year
- Transaction margin dollars: US$446m in Q2 2026, up 42%
- Net income: US$9m in Q2 2026, against a $53m net loss in Q2 2025
- Scale: more than 120 million active consumers and 1.2 million merchants (Q2 2026)
- 2026 guidance: adjusted operating income of US$280m- US$300m (August 2026)
Capital allocation centres on Fair Financing, Klarna's longer-term installment product, where GMV grew 82% to US$4.7bn in the quarter.
From the second half of 2026, Klarna will manage more of its US and German Fair Financing books with intent to sell and measure new loans at fair value, booking income upfront.
Niclas has said Klarna will be as capital-light and capital-efficient as possible on an earnings call for Q2 2026.
Technology underpins the cost base
Non-transaction operating expenses rose 16%, rising to US$490m.
Niclas said roughly 56 cents of every additional transaction margin dollar now reaches the operating line.
In Q3 2025, Klarna said its AI assistant was doing the work of more than 853 full-time agents and had saved US$60m.
It is also positioning for agentic commerce through Google's Agent Payments Protocol and Stripe's Shared Payment Tokens.
Key partners:
- J.P. Morgan Payments: Klarna went live on J.P. Morgan Payments' Commerce Platform in August 2026, giving US merchants of the largest US acquirer, which processes $2.6tn a year, access to Klarna checkout without a separate integration.
- Stripe: In March 2026 Klarna and Stripe said Klarna's flexible payments would be available for AI agent-initiated purchases at US merchants using Stripe's Shared Payment Tokens, with no extra integration needed.
- Google: Klarna supports Google's Agent Payments Protocol (AP2), announced in October 2025, building on integrations with Google Pay, Chrome autofill, Google Play and Google Cloud.
- Visa: The Klarna Card, issued by WebBank, runs on Visa Flexible Credential, letting users pay now or later on one card. It had 6.5m active users by Q2 2026.
- Marqeta: Marqeta has powered Klarna's US virtual cards since 2018 and in June 2025 began processing the Klarna Card in the US on Visa Flexible Credential.
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Executives
Niclas Neglen
Chief Financial Officer
