From skeptic to stablecoin issuer, Klarna’s CEO has made quite the u-turn over the last three years.
Buy now, pay later (BNPL) firm Klarna has officially launched its own stablecoin, KlarnaUSD, after its CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski labelled cryptocurrencies as “decentralised ponzi scheme[s]” a few years ago.
KlarnaUSD will be issued by Bridge, the stablecoin infrastructure firm owned by Stripe, and will launch on the Tempo mainnet in 2026. This will enable stablecoin transactions on the Tempo blockchain, developed by Stripe and Paradigm.
The stablecoin is not currently publicly available but has been live on the testnet version on Tempo. Klarna was granted early access to KlarnaUSD’s infrastructure for advanced testing, prototyping and integration.
On the Tempo Layer-1 blockchain network, the KlarnaUSD stablecoin will used for settling domestic and cross-border transactions.
According to Klarna’s research, cross-border payments generate $120bn in annual transaction fees. The company believes that stablecoins will help “dramatically reduce costs” for consumers and merchants.
The stablecoin launch also builds on the pre-existing relationship between Klarna and Stripe, having worked alongside each other previously to expand the Swedish BNPL’s merchant network across 26 markets, as well to offer its BNPL solutions to more retail checkouts.
“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,” said Siemiatkowski.
Klarna stated KlarnaUSD is the beginning of its “public sharing crypto initiatives” and will reveal its first partner “in the coming weeks”.
Recognising the growing stablecoin economy
Klarna highlighted research from McKinsey which revealed stablecoin transaction volume now exceeds $27 trillion per year, with much of that growth coming from the last two years.
McKinsey attributes the growth in stablecoin transactions to the near-instant settlement speed and low costs as they eliminate the need for multiple intermediaries.
Other contributing factors include greater transparency, availability as stablecoins can be settled outside traditional banking hours, and boosting financial inclusion amongst underbanked populations.
Although not primarily used for BNPL, there are use cases of stablecoins being used for instalment-based payments.
E-commerce platform Uquid has made a ‘Pay in 3’ option available for customers to pay in instalments using Bitcoin or its own native stablecoin, Uquid Coin. The marketplace also enabled Binance Pay to be used for payments in 2021.
From skeptic to stablecoins
In 2022, Klarna CEO Siemiatkowski likened cryptocurrencies to a ponzi scheme but earlier this year, his stance softened.
Siemiatkowski posted on X stating “I give up, (Klarna) will embrace crypto” last February and later admitted “we are the last large fintech to say that” after gaining support from Board Member and Sequoia Capital’s Andew Reed to begin Klarna’s crypto venture.
Within the initial launch of KlarnaUSD, Siemiatkowski said: “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.”
