Klarna Looks to Banking Services

Klarna AB released numbers in February that indicate the payments company’s processing breadth is growing rapidly. News of Klarna’s fourth-quarter 2025 performance also came as the company looks to further its growth as a global digital bank.

“We’ve been executing on a clear plan: acquire customers through seamless payments, then deepen those relationships into banking,” said Sebastian Siemiatkowski, Klarna’s chief executive and cofounder, in a statement. He revealed that the number of customers for Klarna’s banking services doubled over the past year, with revenue amounting to three times the total the company gets from its “average consumers.”

Stockholm-based Klarna sees an opening in banking created by the behavior of banks themselves, Semiatkowski said. “Consumers are moving away from predatory revolving credit and we’re building the transparent alternative they deserve,” he said in his statement.

Consumers appear to be responding to that call. The company finished the year with 15.8 million banking customers, a 101% increase from the end of 2024. It reported 118 million active customers for its payment services, up 28%.

Indeed, Klarna refers to its banking customers as its “most engaged consumers—so engaged that they generate $107 per user, the company reported, more than three times the $30 accounted for by the company’s average users overall. Meanwhile, Klarna’s cards are proving a popular banking product, with 4.2 million active users, a jump of 1.9 million just from the prior quarter.

Overall, the U.S. market is spearheading growth for Klarna, the company reported, as the country accounted for a 58% rise in revenue year-over-year, bettering the 51% growth rate seen in the September quarter. Some 29 million U.S. customers use Klarna.

In payments, the picture looks equally sanguine. Volume for the quarter grew 32% year-over-year, to $38.7 billion, beyond the top end of the company’s guidance. U.S. growth clocked in at 43%. Overall merchant count stands at 966,000, a 42% rise from the same quarter in 2024. Some 115,000 sellers were added in the quarter, a record number, according to Klarna, while overall revenue for the quarter rose 38%, to $1.08 billion.

Observers are cautiously optimistic. “The number of merchants offering—and consumers using—[Karna’s] payments and financing options is increasing at explosive rates, alongside a surge in overall engagement,” notes Eric Grover, proprietor at Intrepid Ventures. “Over the last several years, Klarna has slashed its headcount, significantly boosting its operating leverage. It seems to be successfully evolving into a hybrid multinational payments and credit platform, as well as a retail bank. We’ll see.”