Page 12 - aruba-today-20231221

A12 BUSINESS
Thursday 21 december 2023

Klarna CEO Siemiatkowski says buy

now, pay later is used by shoppers who

otherwise avoid credit

By KEN SWEET
AP Business Writer
NEW YORK (AP) — Sebas-
tian Siemiatkowski is a
co-founder and CEO of
Klarna, the Sweden-based
company that’s one of the
world’s biggest providers
of buy now, pay later ser-
vices to customers. Klarna
started off in Europe and
entered the U.S. market in
2015.
Buy now, pay later has be-
come an increasingly pop- (Associated Press Illustration/Peter Hamlin)
ular option for consumers
for purchases: its usage is and how the company is consumers that they called
up 10-fold since the pan- using artificial intelligence self-aware avoiders, peo-
demic and U.S. regulators software in how it hires. This ple had been burned by
see it as potentially a more interview has been edited the bad practices of credit
sustainable way for bor- for length and clarity. cards.
rowers to pay for purchas- Q: You operated in Europe We found there is a fairly
es instead of using credit for several years before big audience that is prefer-
cards. coming to the U.S. What ring to use debit but occa-
Siemiatkowski spoke to the made you come here? sionally want to use credit
AP about how popular buy A: As we were consider- on single occasions and
now, pay later has gotten ing coming to the US, we where buy now pay later,
since the pandemic, why identified that there was you know, fits them really
consumers are choosing it a fairly large group of U.S. well.q

Rite Aid banned from facial recognition

tech use for 5 years after faulty theft

targeting in stores

By TOM MURPHY from using facial recogni- its surveillance system was
AP Health Writer tion technology for five used incorrectly to identify
Rite Aid has been banned years over allegations that potential shoplifters, espe-
cially Black, Latino, Asian or
female shoppers.
The settlement with the
Federal Trade Commission
addresses charges that the
struggling drugstore chain
didn’t do enough to pre-
vent harm to its customers
and implement “reason-
able procedures,” the gov-
ernment agency said.
Rite Aid said late Tuesday
A Rite Aid sign is displayed on the facade of a store in Pittsburgh,
Jan. 23, 2023. that it disagrees with the al-
Associated Press legations, but that it’s glad
it reached an agreement
to resolve the issue.
The FTC said in a feder-
al court complaint that
technology used by Rite
Aid for several years led
to thousands of incorrect
matches, including an in-
cident where Rite Aid store
employees stopped and
searched an 11-year-old
girl.q