Klarna launches sub-brand and business unit “Klarna Kosma” to capitalize on the rapid growth of the open banking platform

Klarna, the leading global retail banking, payments and shopping service that helps consumers save time and money, be informed and stay in control, today launched Klarna Kosma, a sub-brand and business unit to accelerate the to capitalize on the growth of his world. leading open banking platform.

With easy access to more banks than any other open banking provider, Kosma is rapidly accelerating the time it takes new fintech services to reach global reach and providing the essential building blocks for financial services innovation. Kosma provides financial institutions, fintechs and merchants with the essential connectivity to build the next generation of fintech apps and services by providing easy and secure access to 15,000 banks in 24 countries around the world via a single API.

The new business unit will capitalize on the massive growth Klarna has experienced in this space, having more than doubled the number of affiliated banks over the past year. Today, Kosma processes nearly one billion bank account information requests each year.

“With Kosma, we are opening the power of our proprietary open banking platform and technology to banks, merchants and fintechs who share our dream of a world where consumers own their data and banks compete for customers by delivering value and not lock data. ” says Yaron Shaer, CTO, Klarna.

The platform is already being used to drive a wide range of business and consumer-facing innovations. FINOM, for example, is an Amsterdam-based start-up offering financial management, commercial banking and billing services to SMEs and freelancers in France, Germany and Italy. They have integrated with Klarna to create a new generation of digital invoices that include a Pay Now button that allows payment directly from the invoice, helping their small and micro business customers collect their money much faster and to improve cash flow.

Konstantin Stiskin, member of the supervisory board and co-founder at FINOM says: “More than 5000 FINOM business customers are already using Klarna solutions to improve their lives. Freelancers and SMEs are the backbone of Europe’s economy, but they are largely underserved when it comes to banking and financial services. At FINOM, we work every day to tackle this problem and provide European entrepreneurs with the best tools to make their work and life easier.”

ZealiD offers a digital identity and signature service that enables consumers to register and log in online and sign contracts seamlessly and securely. The service uses Klarna’s open banking platform to identify and validate the consumer’s identity in a simple and innovative way via ZealiD’s user-friendly app, replacing the legacy requirement to provide a bank statement as proof of address. Philip Hallenborg, Founder and CEO of ZealiDsays: “Thanks to Klarna, ZealiD was able to quickly implement the solution and connect to hundreds of banks in all EU member states.”

Klarna first entered the open banking space when it acquired SOFORT, a leading bank-to-bank direct payment service in Germany, in 2014. Since then, Klarna has continued to develop the service, expanding it to 24 markets and starting to use Open Banking for additional in-house services. Klarna now uses Open Banking to power Account Insight Services (AIS), which provide spending insights to millions of shoppers right within the Klarna shopping app, and to provide additional real-time data to make even more responsible credit decisions for Klarna payment methods .

“Over the past year, demand for open banking services from financial institutions and fintech startups has reached an inflection point,” he says Wilko Klaassen, Vice President, Klarna Kosma“That’s why we created a dedicated business unit combining engineering, product management, sales and marketing in the same team to focus on this fast-growing $15 billion market.”