Image credit: Klarna
Klarna, a Stockholm-based “Buy Now, Pay Later” fintech company, announced on Thursday that it has launched ‘Klarna Kosma’ to capitalise on the growth of its Open Banking platform.
The Swedish company entered the Open Banking space when it acquired SOFORT, a direct bank-to-bank payment service in Germany, in 2014.
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Klarna Kosma
Klarna Kosma provides financial institutions, fintechs and merchants with the essential connectivity to build the next generation of fintech apps and services by providing secure access to 15,000 banks in 24 countries through a single API.
Klarna says Kosma processes close to a billion information requests to bank accounts each year.
Currently, the platform is being used to power a broad range of business and consumer-focused innovations, including FINOM, ZealiD and others.
For starters, FINOM is an Amsterdam-based startup that offers financial management, business banking, and billing services to SMEs and freelancers in France, Germany and Italy. They have integrated Klarna to help their small and micro-business clients to collect their money much faster, improving cash flow.
Konstantin Stiskin, supervisory board member and co-founder at FINOM, says, “Over 5000 business clients of FINOM are already using Klarna solutions to improve their lives. Professionals and SMEs are the backbone of the European economy, but they are largely underserved when it comes to banking and financial services. At FINOM we work every day to address this issue, providing European entrepreneurs the best tools to make their work and life easier.”
Similarly, ZealiD, a Stockholm-based company that provides a digital identity and signature service enabling consumers to register and sign-in online, and sign contracts, uses Klarna’s Open Banking platform to identify and validate the consumer’s identity.
Philip Hallenborg, Founder and CEO at ZealiD, says, “Thanks to Klarna, ZealiD could implement the solution quickly, connecting to hundreds of banks across all EU member states.”
Klarna uses Open Banking to power Account Insight Services (AIS), providing insights to shoppers directly in the Klarna shopping app and providing real-time data to make responsible lending decisions for Klarna payment methods.
Wilko Klaassen, VP of Klarna Kosma, says, “Over the past year, the demand for Open Banking services from financial institutions and fintech start-ups, has reached a tipping point, which is why we have built a dedicated business unit which brings together engineering, product management, sales and marketing all together in the same team to focus on this $15B, fast-growing market.”
Klarna: What you need to know
Founded by Niklas Adalberth, Sebastian Siemiatkowski and Victor Jacobsson in 2005, Klarna is an eCommerce payment solutions platform for merchants and shoppers.
Klarna claims to have 147M global active users and 2M transactions a day. It has over 400,000 global retail partners, including H&M, Saks, Sephora, Macys, IKEA, Expedia Group, Samsung, ASOS, Peloton, Ralph Lauren, Abercrombie & Fitch, Nike, and Shein.
With over 5,000 employees, Klarna is active in 45 markets and is one of the most highly-valued private fintechs globally, with a valuation of $45.6B (approx €41.2B).
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