Klarna Building Retail Infrastructure

This points to Klarna trying to sit above the card rails and the merchant storefront as the software layer that controls how shopping, payment, identity, and demand all connect. The idea is not just to finance a purchase, but to own the full loop, shopper discovery in the app, checkout on the merchant site, direct bank payment where possible, and post purchase engagement that drives the next order.

• On the cost side, open banking matters because Klarna can initiate payment from a shopper's bank account instead of routing everything through Visa and Mastercard. Klarna launched its open banking platform in 2019, first framed it as a PSD2 based API layer, and by 2026 disclosed access to over 15,000 banks in 24 markets.
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• On the merchant side, Klarna already acts like retail middleware. Merchants use it because the BNPL button lifts conversion on large baskets, but Klarna has been expanding into ads, subscriptions, cards, and shopping app distribution. In 2024, merchant fees were 57% of revenue, ads were $180M, and cards added interchange on top of lending economics.
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• The closest comparison is not another lender, but checkout and identity layers like Bolt or Rally that try to reduce checkout friction across many storefronts with one integration. Klarna's difference is that it brings both a shopper network and a balance sheet, which lets it combine demand generation, payments, and credit inside one merchant relationship.
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The next step is Klarna turning more of retail's basic plumbing into its own network, so each added product makes the others stronger. If direct bank pay keeps spreading and the app keeps concentrating shopper intent, Klarna moves from being a payment option that merchants test to a commerce operating layer that merchants build around.