Klarna offers three months free access to open banking platform

By Gloria Methri

Swedish FinTech Klarna is opening access to its open banking platform Klarna Kosma, for a select number of start-ups and firms for three months at no cost.

With the new “sandbox” initiative, Klarna hopes to help start-ups develop Proofs of Concepts (POC) in the e-commerce, data and analytics, and FinTech space. It aims to accelerate innovation in the development of open banking use cases.

Launched in April 2022, Klarna Kosma provides financial institutions, FinTechs, and merchants with essential connectivity to build apps and services by providing access to 15,000 banks in 27 countries around the world through a single API. The platform has more than doubled the number of connected banks and trebled the transactions processed on the platform in the past year.

“Open banking was introduced to wrest control of consumer data away from the big banks and make it securely available to drive innovation,” said Wilko Klaassen, VP of Open banking at Klarna. “With that data accessible through simple APIs, with consumers’ permissions, a whole new vista of potential use cases has opened. The initiative we are launching today aims to add rocket fuel to the innovation process.”

As part of the offer, select companies will be given access to the open banking platform for three months, free of charge, with a limit of 300 transactions or active users per month. Start-ups will also get support from experts at Klarna to validate their use cases.