Klarna has unveiled a new branded business unit targeting financial services businesses. Klarna Kosma will harness the rapid growth of its open banking platform, which connects more than 15,000 banks across Europe and the US.
According to Klarna, Kosma provides simple access to more banks than any other open banking provider, cutting the time it takes new fintech services to reach global scale. It has more doubled the number of connected banks in the past year with Kosma processing close to a billion information requests to bank accounts each year.
Wilko Klaassen, VP at Klarna Kosma, said: “Over the past year, the demand for open banking services from financial institutions and fintech startups, has reached a tipping point, which is why we have built a dedicated business unit which brings together engineering, product management, sales and marketing all together in the same team to focus on this $15billion, fast-growing market.”
Powering businesses
Kosma provides financial institutions, fintechs and merchants with the connecivity to build fintech apps and services by providing simple and secure access to 15,000 banks in 24 countries around the world through a single API.
Amsterdam-based startup FINOM has integrated with Klarna to create digital invoices that include a ‘Pay Now’ button which allows the payment directly from the invoice. Meanwhile, digital identity firm ZealiD uses Kosma to identify and validate consumer’s identity using an app.
“With Kosma we are opening up 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, not by locking in data,” said Yaron Shaer, CTO at Klarna.
Following the acquisition of direct bank-to-bank payment service SOFORT in 2014, Klarna has developed its open banking service, expanding it into 24 markets, and also begun to use open banking to power additional in-house services.
For example, Klarna now uses open banking to power Account Insight Services (AIS) which provide spending insights to millions of shoppers directly in the Klarna shopping app.
