Klarnas vd förvånas över oro för ”betala senare”

Wonga.com, also known as Wonga, is a former British payday loan firm that was founded in 2006. The company focused on offering short-term, high-cost loans to customers via online applications, and began processing its first loans in 2007. The firm operated across several countries, including the United Kingdom, Spain, Poland and South Africa; it also operated in Canada until 2016, and in Germany, Switzerland, Austria and the Netherlands through the German payments business, BillPay, between 2013 to 2017.The company was responsible for inventing fully automated risk processing technology to provide short-term, unsecured personal loans online, including via tablet and mobile app. However, it also drew wide criticism from amongst politicians, charities and religious leaders, for the interest it charged, equated to an annual percentage rate (APR) of 1,509%; an example of this was that a loan of £100 over seventeen days (Wonga's average loan term) required £113.60 to repay. The company was criticised heavily by politicians, including the Labour Party leader Ed Miliband as a leading example of predatory lending. The firm's debt collection practices were also scrutinised by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), who found the firm had lent money to many who would never be able to repay and Wonga agreed to compensate 45,000 customers for unfair and misleading debt collection practices.By 2015, the company began to incur losses, which were further increased by discontinuation of sponsorship deals, a data breach in 2017, and a surge of customer compensation claims. Despite an emergency cash injection from shareholders to prevent it becoming insolvent, the firm fell into administration on 30 August 2018, with Grant Thornton appointed to wind down the business, sell assets and identify creditors. By March 2019, administrators noted that compensation claims against the firm increased, but with many claimants unlikely to receive the full value of their claim.