Klarna has launched instant peer-to-peer payments across 13 European countries, building a 114-million-user closed-loop payment network that spans the Nordics, the UK, and major Western European markets.
Coverage and Functionality
The service enables instant transfers between Klarna users via phone number, email, or QR code in Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Italy, Spain, Poland, and Portugal. Transfers settle instantly within Klarna's network, with the underlying movement of funds processed over traditional banking rails.
The geographic footprint covers 13 countries in a single rollout, spanning four Nordic markets, the UK, and eight continental European countries.
Competitive Landscape
Klarna's P2P launch positions it against a growing field of domestic and pan-European instant payment solutions. In the Nordics, Swish (Sweden) and Vipps MobilePay (Norway, Denmark, Finland) are the established mobile payment platforms. In the broader European market, wero - the European Payments Initiative's digital wallet - reached 43.5 million users in its first year and is expanding from P2P into e-commerce payments.
The differentiator for Klarna is its existing user base. With 114 million users across its buy-now-pay-later and banking products, Klarna can distribute P2P payments as a feature addition rather than requiring separate user acquisition. The challenge is that P2P payment networks exhibit local network effects - users send money to people nearby, and local incumbents like Swish and Vipps already handle those corridors.
Stablecoin Exploration
Klarna has indicated plans to expand the service to non-Klarna customers and to explore stablecoin-based settlement options. The stablecoin angle, while still exploratory, reflects a broader trend among European fintechs evaluating whether blockchain-based settlement can reduce costs or enable new capabilities in cross-border payment flows.
For now, Klarna's P2P service runs on conventional banking infrastructure. Whether stablecoin settlement offers practical advantages over existing instant payment rails - particularly as SEPA Instant becomes mandatory across the eurozone - remains an open question.