Klarna scraps open banking brand Klarna Kosma

Klarna has scrapped its open banking brand Klarna Kosma after less than 18 months.

The Swedish BNPL giant launched Klarna Kosma as a brand and business unit in April last year, saying it represented a “major strategic move”.

Klarna Kosma houses Klarna’s open banking platform and was launched amid heightened interest in open banking.

The core piece of Klarna Kosma is account aggregation, meaning that Klarna clients can plug into Klarna’s API and access account statements and garner other banking information and data from 15,000 banks around the world.

Klarna Kosma also has other elements such as account-to-account payments.

By launching Klarna Kosma, Klarna, which has more than 150m customers, was publicly taking on the likes of Visa-owned TInk and Plaid and TrueLayer, in a highly competitive space.

Klarna says the decision to scrap Klarna Kosma- which is thought to have happened last month- is a marketing move and the constituent parts of the business will remain.

The Swedish company adds the move has not led to any job cuts. 

Klarna Kosma VP Wilko Klassen will continue to lead the division.

One source said: “We decided to launch it as a separate brand and give it its own identity. Given it has gone so well, a lot of those parts we’re folding under the wider Klarna brand.”

Klarna Kosma will remain the product brand for Klarna’s API business.

In May this year, Klarna reported that it had halved its losses in the first quarter, reporting a loss of $120 million, compared to a year earlier. 

It also said it was “firmly on track” to reach profitability on a monthly basis in the second half of the year.

Klarna suffered a troubled 2022, which included significant job cuts and an 85 percent cut to its valuation to $6.7bn.

A Klarna spokesperson said: “Since we launched in April 2022, our open banking business has grown tremendously.

“Due to this impressive growth we have taken the decision to connect the brand even more closely with Klarna so the business unit will no longer operate under a separate brand, but under the Klarna corporate brand.”