GDPR: Sweden Imposes a Heavy Fine on Fintech Company Klarna

Klarna, a Swedish fintech company specializing in fragmented payments , has been fined 670,000 euros (7.5 million Swedish crowns) for violating the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) . The Swedish Administrative Court of Appeal ruled on Monday March 11th, finding that the company had not sufficiently informed its customers regarding the use of their personal data.

Klarna is notably accused of not having provided sufficiently precise details on how it stores its customer data; and for not having made the information available on this subject, considered too fragmentary, easy to access. Enough to place the firm in violation of the GDPR.

With it, and since 2018, companies operating within the European Union are required to inform their users and customers about the way in which their personal data is used. The firms concerned must also provide the reasons justifying this data processing, but also provide details on the retention period of the various personal information collected and processed.

Find out how the Swedish fintech company Klarna violated the GDPR policy and read the latest business news of the day with our companion app Born2Invest.

Klarna will have to do better to comply with GDPR

The sanction taken by the Swedish authorities against Klarna is in any case following an investigation carried out in 2022 by the Swedish data protection authority (IMY), specifies the Digital Factory. The organization then reported that Klarna “failed to inform users why it processed their data,” adding that the company ” provided incomplete and misleading information about credit reporting companies,” and that it had not “provided information on the countries to which it had transferred this data,”we read.

Klarna accussed last year for GDPR violations

Note that last year, Klarna was sentenced at first instance to an initial fine of 536,000 euros (6 million Swedish crowns) for GDPR violations. The Swedish administrative court of appeal was therefore more severe during Klarna’s second appearance in court. This is also the first time that a fintech company has been condemned in this way for non-compliance with European regulations, our colleagues point out.

In its defense, Klarna explained that the matter for which it was concerned actually concerned confidentiality notes dating from 2020, adding that they had since been updated. “We have made significant improvements to our privacy notice since the version reviewed by the authorities was posted online, and this decision is therefore no longer relevant,” assured the company, which has not yet given comments regarding the final decision of the Swedish regulators.

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(Featured image by Ljusetitunneln via Pixabay)

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