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Upgrade CEO Renaud Laplanche speaks at a conference in Brooklyn, New York, in 2018.
Alex Flynn | Bloomberg via Getty Images

U.S. fintech start-up Upgrade is set to enter the increasingly crowded buy now, pay later market.

Upgrade, which was founded by former LendingClub boss Renaud Laplanche in 2016, is a digital banking start-up that offers people payment cards along with personal lines of credit.

Unlike a credit card, which lets consumers revolve their balance, Upgrade takes all the purchases someone makes in a month and creates an installment plan for paying down the debt. The payment plans are typically long-term, ranging anywhere from six to 36 months, and charge a fixed interest rate.

Now, Upgrade plans to launch a buy now, pay later-style product that lets users pay off their debt in four months, without accruing any interest. The company expects to debut the new service in the coming months, Laplanche told CNBC.

“We are working on a version of the Upgrade Card that’s better suited for smaller expenses,” Upgrade’s CEO said in an interview. “In that case, we don’t need to charge interest because it’s a smaller amount.”

Buy now, pay later, or BNPL, has boomed to become a $100 billion industry thanks in large part to the coronavirus pandemic which accelerated the growth of online shopping.

BNPL services let shoppers spread the cost of their purchases over three or four months. Rather than charging consumers, BNPL companies make their money by taking a small fee from merchants on each transaction.

Upgrade’s product will be different to those offered by firms like Klarna, Affirm and Afterpay. Instead of adding a checkout option on merchants’ websites, Upgrade will lump a user’s card purchases together and invoice them what they owe over a four-month period.

“What we like about embedding the product into a card is the broader acceptance,” Laplanche told CNBC. “BNPL often relies on partnerships with merchants.”

“It’s starting to get mainstream online,” he added. “But not so much in-store.”

Prior to starting Upgrade, Laplanche helped grow LendingClub into the world’s largest peer-to-peer lending platform, connecting investors with borrowers through its marketplace. However, he was ousted in 2016 amid irregularities with loan practices and Laplanche’s alleged lack of disclosure over a personal investment.

Last year, LendingClub shut down its peer-to-peer loans platform and signaled a push into banking with its acquisition of U.S. lender Radius.

Laplanche has come a long way since his exit from LendingClub, with Upgrade reaching a $3.3 billion valuation in August. The French-born entrepreneur said it would be a while yet before Upgrade goes public, but he wants to make sure the company is IPO-ready in the next 18 months.

“We clearly have the size,” he said. “We’re growing very, very fast. We’ve been profitable now for more than a year, which is rare for a company that is growing that fast.”

“We can hopefully be ready sometime in the next 18 months. Then we’ll make a decision at that time on what’s best for our shareholders and our team members.”

Fintechs jump into BNPL

Upgrade isn’t the only fintech jumping on the BNPL bandwagon. Fast, a start-up backed by payments giant Stripe, plans to offer BNPL as a payment method through its platform. The firm, which lets users purchase items in one click across a range of websites, is aiming to roll out the feature in the first quarter of 2022, CEO and co-founder Domm Holland told CNBC.

“It’s a payment method that we need to support because a certain amount of consumers want to use it a certain percentage of the time,” Holland said. “For me, it’s just a way of addressing a larger share of wallet for our merchants.”

In the U.K., digital bank Monzo has begun offering a BNPL-like product called Flex, which lets customers split payments into monthly installments, either interest-free for three months or at a 19% rate for six to 12 months. Rival firm Revolut is also planning to introduce a BNPL feature.

It highlights growing interest from companies big and small in the booming BNPL market. PayPal debuted its own version of the service, called Pay in 4, last year. Meanwhile, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey’s payments processor Square reached a deal to acquire Australia’s Afterpay for $29 billion, and Mastercard jumped into the space this week with an installments program for banks and fintechs.

Still, the BNPL sector has become the subject of much scrutiny lately. The British government is planning to impose tougher regulatory checks on the fast-growing industry amid concerns that services like Klarna are encouraging shoppers to spend more than they can afford. The U.K. Treasury department is expected to release a consultation on the reforms next month.

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Intel’s new CEO receives $66 million in options and stock grants on top of $1 million salary

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Intel's new CEO receives  million in options and stock grants on top of  million salary

Intel appoints Lip-Bu Tan as CEO.

Courtesy: Intel

New Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan will receive total compensation of $1 million in salary and about $66 million in stock options and grants vesting over the coming years, according to filing on Friday with the SEC.

Tan was named as the chief of Intel this week, spurring hopes that the chip industry veteran can turn around the struggling company. Intel shares are up nearly 20% so far in 2025, and most of those gains came this week, following Tan’s appointment. He starts next week.

Tan will receive $1 million in salary, and he is eligible for an annual bonus worth $2 million.

He will also receive stock units in a long-term equity grant valued at $14.4 million, as well as a performance grant of $17 million in Intel shares. Both grants will vest over a period of five years, although Tan won’t earn any of those shares if Intel’s stock price drops over the next three years. He can earn more stock if the company’s share price outperforms the market.

Tan will receive a package of stock options worth $9.6 million, as well as a new hire option grant worth $25 million.

In total, Tan’s compensation package has about $66 million in long-term equity awards and options in addition to salary, bonuses, and legal expenses. If Intel goes through a change of control, Tan could be eligible for accelerated vesting, according to the filing.

“Lip-Bu’s compensation reflects his experience and credentials as an accomplished technology leader with deep industry experience and is market competitive,” Intel said in an emailed comment. “The vast majority of his compensation is equity-based and tied to long-term shareholder value creation.”

Separately, Tan agreed to purchase $25 million in Intel shares and hold them in order to be eligible for the grants and bonuses.

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Buy now, pay later lender Klarna files for U.S. IPO

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Buy now, pay later lender Klarna files for U.S. IPO

Pedestrians walk by an advertisement for Klarna.

Daniel Harvey Gonzalez | In Pictures via Getty Images

Klarna, a provider of buy now, pay later loans filed its IPO prospectus on Friday, and plans to go public on the New York Stock Exchange under ticker symbol KLAR.

Klarna, headquartered in Sweden, hasn’t yet disclosed the number of shares to be offered or the expected price range.

The decision to go public in the U.S. deals a significant blow to European stock exchanges, which have struggled to retain homegrown tech firms. Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski had hinted for years that a U.S. listing was more likely, citing better visibility and regulatory advantages.

Klarna is continuing to rebuild after a dramatic downturn. Once a pandemic-era darling valued at $46 billion in a SoftBank-led funding round, Klarna saw its valuation slashed by 85% in 2022, plummeting to $6.7 billion in its most recent primary fundraising. However, analysts now estimate the company’s valuation in the $15 billion range, bolstered by its return to profitability in 2023.

Revenue last year increased 24% to $2.8 billion. The company’s operating loss was $121 million for the year, and adjusted operating profit was $181 million, swinging from a loss of $49 million a year earlier.

Founded in 2005, Klarna is best known for its buy now, pay later model, a service that allows consumers to split purchases into installments. The company competes with Affirm, which went public in 2021, and Afterpay, which Block acquired for $29 billion in early 2022. Klarna’s major shareholders include venture firms Sequoia Capital and Atomico, as well as SoftBank’s Vision Fund.

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Shares of DocuSign surge 14% on strong earnings, AI boost

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Shares of DocuSign surge 14% on strong earnings, AI boost

DocuSign CEO Allan Thygesen on Q4 results, launch of DocuSign IAM and growth outlook

Docusign rose more than 14% after reporting stronger-than-expected earnings after the bell Thursday.

“We’ve really stabilized and I think started to turn the corner on the core business,” CEO Allan Thygesen said Friday on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.” “We’ve become much more efficient.”

Here’s how the company performed in the fourth quarter FY2025 compared to LSEG estimates:

  • Earnings per share: 86 cents vs. 85 cents expected
  • Revenue: $776 million vs. $761 million

The earnings beat was boosted in part by the electronic signature service’s new artificial intelligence-enabled content called Docusign IAM, a platform for optimizing processes involving agreements.

“It’s tremendously valuable,” Thygesen said. “It’s opening a treasure trove of data. … We’re seeing excellent pickup.”

Looking to fiscal year 2026, Thygesen said Docusign expects IAM to account for low double digits of the total growth of the business by Q4.

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Thygesen said the company is also partnering with Microsoft and Google, which the company does not view as competitors because they’re “not looking to become agreement management specialists.”

Despite consumer sentiment and demand dipping across the board due to tariff uncertainty, Thygesen said the company has not seen anything yet in its transactional activity to indicate a slowdown in demand or growth.

“More and more people are going to want to sign things electronically,” Thygesen said.

The company reported subscription revenue at $757 million, marking a 9% year-over-year increase. Docusign said it expects first-quarter revenue between $745 million and $749 million and projects full-year revenue between $3.129 billion and $3.141 billion.

Docusign reported net income of $83.50 million, or 39 cents per share, compared to net income of $27.24 million, or 13 cents per share, a year ago. Fourth-quarter revenue of $776 million was up 9% from the year-ago quarter.

DocuSign went public in 2018 at a $6 billion valuation. The company’s share price soared during the pandemic as demand for remote services boomed during lockdowns and social restrictions, hitting record highs in 2021 before plummeting. Thygesen, who previously worked at Google, joined the company in September 2022 after DocuSign’s massive slide.

The stock is down more than 16% year-to-date.

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