With Kosma, the Swedish payment provider Klarna is launching its own brand for its open banking function, which is aimed at financial service providers.
Read also: Italy’s financial regulator imposes a ban against N26
The acquired German subsidiary Sofort GmbH laid the foundation for the business.
Under the new brand, Klarna offers an API (Application Programming Interface) that can be used by other entities. This way, they will be able to focus on developing their own product.
Dealers, fintechs or financial service providers can use the bank accounts function via an interface. 15,000 banks in Europe and the US would be available for the service, it said.
Visa surprised the European fintech industry as it announced that it would acquire Tink for €1.8 billion ($2.15 billion at the time of the deal). Klarna now wants to compete directly with Tink with a new business unit that has its own brand.
Ahead of the launch of Klarna Kosma, a new Open Banking brand, Wilko Klaassen, the company’s VP Business Development, reveals how Klarna’s disruptive DNA can help partners shake up the Open Banking market with new data applications:
“For Klarna, Open Banking is an exciting journey that began in 2004 with SOFORT (a Klarna company) payments and went into hyper-drive in 2018 with PSD2. It has given us a chance to re-bundle and democratise financial services – and it grants users the power to determine what happens to their data.”
“In this respect, OB is not just helpful but fundamentally necessary. It provides a single standard, allows scalability, and ensures the quality of interactions and consent management required for banks to let third parties access their data networks.”
“We see a lot of potential outside the more traditional target audience (banks & fintechs). Big merchants and financial management software companies are starting to use OB to better serve their clients. Klarna Kosma can help these industries bring whole product offerings to market much sooner and at a lower cost based on the building blocks that we deliver,” adds Klasseen
