Klarna Building Commerce and Payments Network

Klarna is trying to turn BNPL from a one click credit button into a daily shopping and payments habit. Each added use case gives Klarna another chance to see what a shopper browses, buys, saves, and pays for, which matters in a market where merchants can easily swap one installment lender for another. That is why debit, rewards, virtual cards, and shopping features sit next to lending inside the same app.

• The product expansion is concrete. Klarna lets users shop featured stores, create one time virtual cards for any online checkout, use debit to pay outside BNPL, and earn cash back rewards from its merchant base. This pulls Klarna into more transactions, including lower friction and offline spend.
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• The merchant value is not just lending. Retail partners adopt Klarna because installment payments visibly lift conversion on baskets that feel large to younger shoppers, then Klarna tries to keep that shopper relationship for itself through the app so it can capture first party shopping behavior and send demand back to merchants.
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• This is also how Klarna differs from Affirm. Affirm has leaned into higher ticket lending and major platform distribution, while Klarna has pushed harder into a consumer app, rewards, ads, cards, and other non BNPL revenue streams. By 2024, core BNPL merchant fees were 57% of Klarna revenue, down from 75% in 2020.
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The next step is a more closed loop network where Klarna does not just finance checkout, but also drives discovery, routes payment, and monetizes rewards, ads, and interchange around the purchase. If that works, Klarna stops looking like a BNPL vendor and starts looking more like a commerce and payments network built on top of shopper data.