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Banking and payments platform Klarna AB announced early Monday a global membership program featuring Premium and Max rewards levels and offering cash back and benefits related to travel. The new program is starting out in Europe but “expansion to the U.S. is planned for the coming weeks,” the payments company says.
Stockholm-based Klarna, which entered the U.S. market in 2015 in a partnership with Macy’s, the department-store chain, says the new program has already signed 1 million customers for the new program and notes it is competing with credit card rewards offers that require higher levels of spending for comparable rewards.
Klarna also has a strategic purpose in mind with the new rewards program. “The launch marks a major step in Klarna’s evolution into a full-scale digital bank helping consumers manage their money with greater value and control,” the company notes in its release.
The new program offers cashback and so-called lifestyle rewards at spending levels that don’t lead users to overspend or take on debt, Klarna says. The plan offers four reward levels Core, Plus, Premium, and Max, all of which require a membership fee. The premium plan in the U.S. market costs $17.99 per month and offers cash back as well as subscriptions to various newspapers and magazines, plus a 16-gram metal card.
The Max level offers the same benefits plus airport-lounge access, travel and rental-car insurance, and a 16-gram rose gold metal card for a fee of $44.99 per month in the U.S. market. Both plans are expected to become available “within the coming weeks,” Klarna says.
The new offer comes as Klarna has enjoyed steady growth. The payments company, founded in 2005, went public only in September and claims more than 111 million active users globally. It says it processes 2.9 million transactions per day online, in physical stores, and via Apple Pay and Google Pay at more than 790,000 merchants.
Klarna has also become a major player in the market for buy now, pay later programs. Last month, the company announced it will work with Google Cloud to speed development of consumer-oriented products and marketing campaigns within the Klarna app. In September, the company added payments for mobile-phone service to its roster of merchants.
