Who are Klarna's competitors?
Klarna's annual report on Form 20-F for 2025, filed February 26, 2026, says that depending on the market and product its network may compete with five groups: credit and debit cards from issuers such as J.P. Morgan Chase, Citibank, Bank of America, HSBC, BNP Paribas, Barclays, Credit Agricole, Santander and American Express, and payment networks such as Affirm, Block and PayPal; card networks such as Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Capital One and Discover; neobanks such as Revolut and Nubank; buy now, pay later providers such as Afterpay; and e-commerce platforms such as Shopify, Amazon and Walmart. In advertising it names Amazon and Walmart. The rivals name Klarna back: Affirm's fiscal 2026 10-K lists it among mobile wallet and pay-over-time competitors, and Synchrony's and Sezzle's 2025 10-Ks name it too. The sharpest head-to-head is with Affirm in the U.S.: CNBC reported in March 2025 that Klarna would replace Affirm as Walmart's exclusive buy now, pay later provider. Banks hold their own on satisfaction: in J.D. Power's 2025 study the card-based plans of American Express and JPMorgan Chase scored highest, and Klarna was the highest-rated BNPL company, fourth overall. Klarna reported GMV of $128 billion for 2025 and 120 million active consumers in Q2 2026. On AI, Klarna says its OpenAI-built assistant handled 80% of customer service chats in 2025, while PayPal, Visa and American Express are building for purchases made by AI agents.[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10]
Data as of Nov 2, 2026 · Klarna profile updated Oct 19, 2026 · 21 sources cited on this page · 56 fintechs profiled on this site · Markdown
How does Klarna describe its competition in its annual report?
Form 20-F for 2025 (filed February 26, 2026), risk factors: "depending on the market and a particular product or solution, our network may compete with any of the following: • Alternative payment methods, such as credit and debit cards—including those provided by card issuing banks such as J.P. Morgan Chase, Citibank, Bank of America, HSBC, BNP Paribas, Barclays, Credit Agricole, Santander or American Express—and payment networks such as Affirm, Block or PayPal; • Traditional credit card networks, such as Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Capital One or Discover; • Neo banks , such as Revolut or NuBank; • “Buy now, pay later” solutions, such as AfterPay; and • E-commerce platforms with merchant enablement solutions, including advertising solutions, and integrated payment capabilities, such as Shopify, Amazon or Walmart."[1]
The same section says "Some of our competitors, particularly traditional credit-issuing banks as well as large internet marketing providers , are substantially larger and more established than we are", with advantages including lower-cost funding, and that Klarna's "advertising solutions compete with a number of products offered by various companies active in the advertising industry, including large and established internet and technology companies, such as Amazon, or large retail corporations, such as Walmart."[1]
Some rivals are also partners. The 20-F says Klarna partners with Visa in issuing the Klarna card in select markets and with Stripe to offer its payment methods across Stripe's merchants, and it lists Walmart among its merchants.[1]
Who competes with Klarna, where, and how do they compare on AI?
Each competitor's scale is its own latest annual figure on its own measure and period, so the figures are not one series. Klarna reported GMV of $128 billion for 2025 and, in Q2 2026, GMV of $36.6 billion, 120 million active consumers and 1,208k merchants.
| Competitor | Where they compete | Dated scale figure | How they compare on AI | Sources |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Affirm | U.S. pay-over-time at checkout; named in Klarna's 20-F, and Affirm's 10-K names Klarna. Klarna replaced Affirm as Walmart's exclusive BNPL provider, through Walmart's OnePay (CNBC, March 2025) | GMV of $50.2 billion in the year ended June 30, 2026 | Affirm's 10-K describes AdaptAI as its AI-powered personalized promotion platform and warns rivals may adopt AI faster | Klarna 20-F; Affirm 10-K FY2026; CNBC[1][2][5] |
| PayPal | Wallet checkout and BNPL; named in Klarna's 20-F. PayPal offers BNPL in the U.S., Germany, France, the U.K. and Australia, among other markets | 439 million active accounts across approximately 200 markets at December 31, 2025 | Its 2025 10-K strategy is to let consumers shop and pay "online, in-person and through artificial intelligence (“AI”) agents" | Klarna 20-F; PayPal 10-K FY2025[1][8] |
| Block (Afterpay and Cash App) | Klarna's 20-F names Block among payment networks and Afterpay among BNPL solutions; Block's 10-K says Cash App competes with BNPL providers | 59 million Cash App monthly transacting actives (Q4 2025) | Introduced Moneybot in Cash App and embedded Square AI in the Square Dashboard in Q4 2025 | Klarna 20-F; Block 10-K FY2025; Block Q4 2025 shareholder letter[1][11][12] |
| Visa | Named in Klarna's 20-F as a traditional card network; Visa's 10-K says it offers BNPL solutions to issuers and fintechs. Also Klarna's partner in issuing the Klarna card | 329 billion payments and cash transactions with Visa's brand in fiscal 2025, 258 billion of them processed by Visa | Visa Intelligent Commerce for agentic commerce, and an MCP server that lets AI systems use its APIs (fiscal 2025 10-K) | Klarna 20-F; Visa 10-K FY2025[1][9] |
| American Express | Named in Klarna's 20-F as both card issuer and network; Amex's 10-K lists point-of-sale lenders and buy now, pay later products among its competitors. Its card-based BNPL scored highest in J.D. Power's 2025 study | Worldwide billed business of $1,670 billion in 2025 | Agentic Commerce Experiences developer kit and Amex Agent Purchase Protection for purchases by registered AI agents (April 2026) | Klarna 20-F; American Express 10-K 2025; Payments Dive; American Express[1][13][6][10] |
| Synchrony | U.S. point-of-sale credit; its 2025 10-K names Affirm, Afterpay and Klarna as non-bank pay-over-time providers and sells its own Synchrony Pay Later at retailers including Amazon and Lowe's | $182.3 billion of purchase volume financed in 2025; 70.7 million active accounts at December 31, 2025 | Uses machine learning algorithms for data-led personalization; its 10-K says AI shopping agents may select the payment method at the point of sale | Synchrony 10-K 2025[3] |
| Revolut | Named in Klarna's 20-F as a neobank; its CEO said in 2021 that Revolut would likely launch a product to rival Klarna in Europe (Bloomberg) | Retail customers up 30% to 68.3 million and revenue of $6 billion in 2025 | CNBC says Revolut accelerated expansion in AI and machine learning in 2025, including through partnerships with investor NVentures | Klarna 20-F; CNBC; Bloomberg[1][14][15][16] |
How do consumers rate Klarna against bank installment plans?
From J.D. Power's 2025 U.S. buy now, pay later satisfaction study of roughly 4,300 consumers, as reported by Payments Dive on February 27, 2025.
| Provider | Result | Source |
|---|---|---|
| American Express and JPMorgan Chase (card-based BNPL) | Highest marks from consumers surveyed | Payments Dive[6] |
| Citi Flex Pay | Placed ahead of Klarna | Payments Dive[6] |
| Klarna | Highest rated among buy now, pay later companies, fourth overall | Payments Dive[6] |
| Gen Z behavior | 54% of Gen Z said they used BNPL in the 2024 holidays, against 50% who used credit cards | Payments Dive[6] |
What companies are similar to Klarna?
| Company | Why it is similar | Sources |
|---|---|---|
| Affirm | A U.S.-centric buy now, pay later lender, public since 2021 (CNBC), with its own card and pay-over-time loans at checkout; its 10-K names Klarna as a competitor | CNBC; Affirm 10-K FY2026[5][2] |
| Afterpay (Block) | Pay-in-installments brand owned by Block; Sezzle's 10-K calls it "a subsidiary of Block, Inc.", and Block's definition of Cash App spending includes Afterpay through Cash App | Sezzle 10-K; Block Q4 2025 shareholder letter[4][12] |
| PayPal Pay Later | Short-term BNPL without interest or consumer late fees for missed payments in most of its markets, offered by PayPal, which had 439 million active accounts at the end of 2025 | PayPal 10-K FY2025[8] |
| Sezzle | A smaller BNPL lender whose 2025 10-K names Klarna among its main competitors in both the U.S. and Canada | Sezzle 10-K 2025[4] |
| Revolut | An app-based financial company that Klarna's 20-F lists as a neobank competitor; it planned a BNPL product to rival Klarna's | Klarna 20-F; Bloomberg[1][16] |
What does the Klarna profile record on this topic?
The rows below are the entries of the Klarna AI strategy profile that bear on this page, as of Oct 19, 2026; the profile holds the full record of 11 dated moves, 7 use cases and 15 sources.
| Use case | What the record shows | Status | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Klarna AI Assistant | OpenAI-built conversational assistant handling customer-service chats across markets and languages; reported doing the work of 700 (2024), 853 (Q3 2025) and over 850 (full-year 2025, 80% of service chats) full-time agents. | In production | [17][18][1] |
| Real-time fraud detection | Established ML techniques used for real-time fraud detection and prevention across the payments network, per the IPO prospectus. | In production | [19] |
| AI coding copilot | As of June 2025, 80% of Klarna's engineers and data scientists had connected their work software to an AI copilot that can create and review code, per internal data cited in the IPO prospectus. | In production | [19] |
| Date | Move | Detail | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nov 18, 2025 | Q3 2025 results: AI assistant now equivalent to 853 agents | Klarna's investor presentation reports the AI assistant doing the equivalent work of 853 full-time agents, delivering $58 million of annual cost savings, with customer satisfaction on par with human agents. | [18] |
| Sep 10, 2025 | Klarna lists on the NYSE | Klarna Group plc priced its IPO at $40 per ordinary share (above the expected range), raising about $1.37 billion; shares opened at $52 and closed the first day at $45.82, up 15%, valuing the company at roughly $17.3 billion, trading as 'KLAR.' | [20][19] |
| Feb 27, 2024 | Klarna AI Assistant goes global | The OpenAI-built assistant reports 2.3 million conversations and two-thirds of service chats handled in its first month, equivalent to 700 full-time agents, satisfaction on par with humans, resolution time cut from about 11 to under 2 minutes, and an estimated $40 million 2024 profit improvement; live in 23 markets, 24/7, in more than 35 languages. | [17] |
| Mar 23, 2023 | Klarna builds a ChatGPT plugin with OpenAI | One of the first brands to use OpenAI's plugin protocol, giving ChatGPT users curated shopping recommendations through Klarna; Siemiatkowski said the plugin passed his 'mom test' for being easy to use. | [21] |
Who are Klarna's biggest competitors?
Klarna's 2025 Form 20-F names card issuers such as J.P. Morgan Chase, Citibank, Bank of America and American Express; Affirm, Block and PayPal; the card networks Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Capital One and Discover; neobanks Revolut and Nubank; Afterpay; and Shopify, Amazon and Walmart. Its closest pure rival is Affirm, which Klarna replaced as Walmart's exclusive BNPL provider, CNBC reported in March 2025.
What companies are similar to Klarna?
Affirm, Block's Afterpay, PayPal Pay Later and Sezzle sell installment payments at checkout as Klarna does; Sezzle's 2025 10-K names Klarna among its main competitors in the U.S. and Canada. Revolut, which Klarna lists as a neobank competitor, is the closest app-based alternative in Europe.
Is Klarna bigger than Affirm?
By the companies' own measures, yes. Klarna reported GMV of $128 billion for calendar 2025 and 120 million active consumers in Q2 2026. Affirm reported GMV of $50.2 billion for its fiscal year ended June 30, 2026. CNBC describes Affirm as more U.S.-centric and Klarna's network as more global.
Do banks compete with Klarna?
Yes. Klarna's 20-F names card-issuing banks first and says traditional credit-issuing banks are substantially larger, with lower-cost funding. In J.D. Power's 2025 study the card-based BNPL plans of American Express and JPMorgan Chase scored highest, Citi Flex Pay placed ahead of Klarna, and Klarna was the top-rated BNPL company.
How do Klarna's competitors use AI?
On the record: PayPal's 10-K aims to let consumers pay through AI agents; Visa offers Visa Intelligent Commerce and an MCP server for AI systems; American Express launched an agentic commerce developer kit in April 2026; Block added Moneybot to Cash App; and Affirm sells AdaptAI. Klarna says its own AI assistant handled 80% of service chats in 2025.
- Klarna Group plc Annual Report (Form 20-F) for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2025
- Affirm Holdings Annual Report (Form 10-K) for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2026
- Synchrony Financial Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2025
- Sezzle Inc. Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2025
- Klarna, nearing IPO, plucks lucrative Walmart fintech partnership from rival Affirm
- Gen Z uses BNPL more than credit cards, survey shows
- Klarna Q2'26 Earnings Release (Exhibit 99.2 to Form 6-K)
- PayPal Holdings, Inc. Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2025
- Visa Inc. Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended September 30, 2025
- American Express Debuts Agentic Commerce Experiences (ACE) Developer Kit and Announces Industry-First Protection for Registered Agent Purchases
- Block, Inc. Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2025
- Block Q4 2025 Shareholder Letter (Exhibit 99.1 to Form 8-K)
- American Express Company Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2025
- British fintech Revolut reports record annual profit as it gears up for U.S. push
- 29. Revolut (2026 CNBC Disruptor 50)
- Revolut CEO Would Like to Buy Klarna. He'll Battle It Instead
- Klarna AI assistant handles two-thirds of customer service chats in its first month
- Klarna Q3 2025 Investor Presentation (Exhibit 99.2 to Form 6-K)
- Klarna Group plc Prospectus (Form 424B4)
- Klarna stock jumps 15% in NYSE debut after pricing IPO above range
- Klarna brings smoooth shopping to ChatGPT
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