John Keatley is the Co-Founder and CEO of Scratch Financial, a point-of-sale lender that aims to help merchants increase sales and help consumers quickly and easily obtain low-cost financing for high ticket price items. Scratch is initially focused on the veterinary care segment with plans to expand to other verticals shortly. Scratch takes the sophisticated underwriting and competitive pricing of online lending and puts it where consumers need it most – in the checkout aisle.
Before launching Scratch, John was CFO at Klarna, a European “unicorn” startup that provides short-term consumer financing and payment processing for e-commerce. While at Klarna, John secured over $150 million of private equity to fund Klarna’s rapid growth and international expansion.
Before Klarna, John was CFO of Pasadena-based Green Dot Corporation, the leading provider of prepaid debit cards and related services in the U.S. John helped grow the business from startup phase to over $500 million of revenue and led Green Dot’s IPO in 2010 that valued the company at $1.5 billion.
John has also been an Engagement Manager at McKinsey and Company where he was a member of the FIG (financial institutions group) practice.John assists startup companies in Los Angeles and Stockholm, Sweden as an active advisor and angel investor. He received an MBA from Harvard and an AB in Physics from Princeton University.