An Overland Park company that services Sprint credit cards is laying off 99 employees, according to a notification filed with the Kansas Department of Commerce.
Home Credit US, which is located on the Sprint campus in Overland Park, began in 2015 as a joint venture with Sprint. The company is part of Home Credit Group, a consumer finance and credit card servicing company that was founded in 1997 in the Czech Republic.
Home Credit US said it expects the layoffs to begin on Jan. 31 and continue over the following months. The company’s notice referred to the layoffs as a “permanent partial closing of the facility.”
It’s unclear how many employees will be left following the layoffs.
Documents filed with the city of Overland Park in 2017 indicate that Home Credit US subleased nearly 35,000 square feet on the third floor of 6240 Sprint Parkway. At the time, Home Credit US said it planned to hire 27 employees and grow to as many as 180 employees by September 2016.
The initial positions were mainly in operations, management, credit, customer relations, sales, information technology, legal, finance and human resources, according to the documents.
Home Credit US did not return a phone call seeking comment on the layoffs.
Sprint's proposed $26 billion merger with T-Mobile is pending. The U.S. Justice Department and Federal Communications Commission have signed off on the deal, but it still faces an anti-trust lawsuitfiled by 15 state attorneys general and the District of Columbia. The case is scheduled to go to trial in New York next week.
Lisa Belot, a spokeswoman for Sprint, said the Home Credit US layoffs would not spell any changes for Sprint credit card customers.
"When we have more information to share, we will reach out to those customers directly," Belot said.
Home Credit US's parent, Home Credit Group, is based in Amsterdam and operates in Central and Eastern Europe and Asia, including China, Russia and India. The company says it lends to people with little or no credit history who may be underserved by traditional banks.
Excluding its U.S. operation, the company reported net income of $650 million last year.
Home Credit Group’s biggest investor is the Czech investment group PPF, which is owned by the Czech Republic’s richest businessman, Petr Kellner.
Editor's note: This story has been updated to include the comments of a Sprint spokeswoman.
Dan Margolies is a senior reporter and editor at KCUR. You can reach him on Twitter @DanMargolies.
