Klarna expands into peer-to-peer payments across Europe as the Swedish fintech giant strengthens its position as a leading global digital bank.
Klarna announced the launch of instant instant peer-to-peer (P2P) payments across 13 European countries. The new feature enables Klarna customers in Belgium, Denmark, Italy, Finland, France, Germany, Norway, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, and the UK to send money directly through the firm’s app.
To ensure security, once a user confirms the amount and picks a recipient — by phone number, QR code, email, or saved contact — Klarna runs multiple fraud and eligibility checks. In October, the BNPL company teamed up with Google Cloud to use its AI hardware and bolster fraud detection.
For now, the P2P service is confined to transfers among Klarna’s 114 million users, but the company plans to open it to non-Klarna customers and enable cross-border payments down the line.
“Customers are sick of the friction and fees of traditional banking,” states Sebastian Siemiatkowski, co-founder and CEO of Klarna. “With peer-to-peer payments we’re making it even easier to manage all of your payments through Klarna, now including small transfers, making managing your money quicker, easier, and cheaper”, asserts Siemiatkowski.
Although Klarna’s P2P payments presently use traditional banking rails, the company says it is “already exploring stablecoin-based options to boost speed, reach, and efficiency.” Stablecoins are a growing focus for Klarna: it recently unveiled its first stablecoin, KlarnaUSD, due to launch this year on Tempo, the new Layer‑1 blockchain from Stripe and Paradigm, marking Klarna’s entry into crypto.
Few months ago, after touting AI’s potential to replace human work, Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski is backtracking and reversing an AI-induced hiring freeze to bring on more human staff.
Siemiatkowski, told Bloomber that Klarna is hiring human workers again to ensure that customers always have a human presence to talk to, if needed.
“From a brand perspective, a company perspective, I just think it’s so critical that you are clear to your customer that there will always be a human if you want,” Siemiatkowski highlighted.
About
Klarna is a Swedish fintech founded in 2005 that offers consumer-focused payment and banking services—best known for its buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) products, installment plans, and a shopping app that provides one-click checkout, merchant financing, and buyer protection. Serving over 100 million users and thousands of merchants across Europe and North America, Klarna has expanded into broader financial services (cards, savings, and P2P transfers) and is exploring crypto and stablecoin initiatives as it scales its payments and fraud-detection capabilities.