Klarna IPO: Investors to scrutinize fintech's digital bank pivot

As Klarna gears up for its highly-anticipated initial public offering, investors will be closely scrutinizing the fintech firm's bid to rebrand itself as an all-encompassing digital bank. The Swedish payments group has become synonymous with the buy now, pay later (BNPL) model, which allows people to split purchases into interest-free installments. However, in recent months Klarna has attempted to convince the market that it's not a one-trick pony, and that it should be considered as more of a digital retail bank rather than a simple BNPL firm. "We want Americans to start to associate us with not only buy now, pay later, but [with] the PayPal wallet type of experience that we have," Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski told CNBC's " The Exchange " in May. "We are basically a neobank to a lar