Klarna Announces Its Own Stablecoin KlarnaUSD

Klarna Partners With Bridge And Tempo For KlarnaUSD

Klarna has announced that it will be launching its own stablecoin called KlarnaUSD.

The Swedish BNPL (Buy-Now-Pay-Later) company has officially entered into the stablecoin space as more and more neobanks and fintechs are embracing the new technology. To bring this to fruition, Klarna has partnered with Bridge - a leading stablecoin issuer and orchestrator - and Tempo - the new layer 1 blockchain specifically built for payments. The majority of the development and integration is set to take place throughout 2026.

Co-founder and CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski has expressed:

“With 114 million customers and $112 billion in annual GMV, Klarna has the scale to change payments globally: with Klarna’s scale and Tempo’s infrastructure, we can challenge old networks and make payments faster and cheaper for everyone. Crypto is finally at a stage where it is fast, low-cost, secure, and built for scale. This is the beginning of Klarna in crypto, and I’m excited to work with Stripe and Tempo to continue to shape the future of payments.”

Choosing to go with Bridge and Tempo seems to be a sure bet for the company, given how Bridge powers many other stablecoins and stablecoin technical integrations for large financial institutions. With other companies across remittance and money transfer platforms also announcing stablecoin-related features and products, this is another 2025 highlight.

Klarna To Use KlarnaUSD For Treasury, Merchant Payouts

Klarna will likely first make use of KlarnaUSD for its own corporate treasury operations and make money movement across its many accounts operate much faster, saving on traditional fees and delays. However, there are rising questions surrounding corporate and institutional yield / rewards on stablecoin holdings, so this remains to be seen how it develops.

Additionally, the company offers services across the 26 markets, therefore has great potential to migrate towards a more open and external stablecoin strategy. It can gradually move its focus towards its active merchants and existing customer base and provide instant stablecoin payouts, as well as checkout options for buyers around the world.

In time, the latter will serve Klarna's retention positively in Europe and other regions, with competitors such as Affirm and Afterpay also growing in size and offering similar buy-now-pay-later options across the U.S and Australia respectively.

Klarna Grows In Q3 With Record Revenue Earnings

Tying in closely with its latest Q3 earnings report, the company exceeded expectations and recorded an impressive $903M total for its revenue, adding 27M new users and 235K new merchants. With economic uncertainty still looming, more individuals are adopting alternate forms of payments and financing for their everyday purchases and larger spend items.

With merchants likely to average 20-40% more purchases after adopting BNPL and the market project to grow to $550B this year, there are considerable opportunities for Klarna to capitalise on and use stablecoins for operational growth and as a stickier product solution for broader user retention.