Klarna’s announcement last week that it was expanding its partnership with eBay into the US landed with little noise, but it said a lot about where the company is heading.
The brand, which rose to prominence as a provider of buy-now-pay-later services, is positioning itself as a media platform that sells influence at the moment of intent. Put another way, it’s angling to become the space where decisions get shaped, not just processed.
From payments to persuasion
Klarna’s app already hosts more than payments. Users scroll through price alerts, creator content and personalised recommendations. They discover products, track deals, and decide what to buy — often before they’ve landed on a retailer’s site.
As Molly Elvin, head of business development at Socially Powerful, explains: ‘We’re seeing consumers engage with content, discover products through their favourite creators and complete transactions without leaving that ecosystem.’
Klarna now brings discovery and purchase into the same space, and that puts it in a different category. It’s not an ad network in the traditional sense, as it doesn’t run display ads or compete for attention. Instead, Klarna monetises behaviour that’s already in motion; using first-party purchase data, browsing patterns and contextual signals to shape what shoppers buy, and when.
Klarna’s Creator Platform, for example, gives brands access to real-time performance analytics across campaigns. It’s an offering that moves Klarna closer to full-stack media than influencer marketplace.
For the most part, when planners think about Klarna, they still think about a checkout button. But the company is focused on shifting that perception, by positioning itself as part of the planning conversation, not just the payment flow.
Last year, Klarna’s ad business made up 6% of its revenue. Not dominant, but growing. The company processes nearly 3 million transactions daily. That volume, paired with SKU-level data and embedded shopper behaviour, makes for an efficient ad model.
Klarna isn’t alone in compressing the funnel, either. TikTok Shop generated over $33 billion in global GMV last year — including $9 billion in the US — by merging entertainment with in-app checkout. Klarna’s model is lower profile but no less ambitious: it starts from the transaction and builds media on top.
The hybrid problem
Despite its ambitions, Klarna doesn’t sit neatly on most media plans. It’s not a marketplace like Amazon, nor a retailer or social platform. It doesn’t hold inventory or command search volume, but rather shapes intent in a space between formats.
That ambiguity can be a liability. It’s often unclear who owns Klarna inside a brand team — or what budget it belongs to.
Some brands are adjusting. ‘We’re seeing dedicated media spend going toward platforms like Klarna,’ Elvin says. ‘There’s growing recognition that full-funnel environments — where discovery and payment sit side by side — are worth planning for.’ Klarna’s traction across the UK and Europe, where adoption is broader, is likely helping make the case.
Still, the lack of a clean category leaves Klarna open to being misunderstood. It’s a performance channel without the usual signals.
What happens when influence and credit converge
Klarna’s media model is shaped by its core business: credit. That’s where it still makes most of its money, and where it faces its sharpest scrutiny.
Earlier this year, Klarna extended its buy-now-pay-later services to DoorDash. Klarna said it was simply meeting demand. Online, the optics were less forgiving, as meme accounts began joking about burrito debt and fintech-funded takeout.
The moment reveals a pressure point. Klarna’s pitch is built on making shopping feel lighter: more optional, more personal. But when that same frictionless design is applied to essentials, it starts to feel exploitative.
As Klarna moves deeper into media and introduces creator content and AI-driven nudges, it may find itself vulnerable to criticism. It’s no longer just making it easier for people to buy things they want — it’s making them want things, too.
What Klarna is really selling
The eBay deal expands Klarna’s reach into categories like electronics, collectibles and fashion; areas where consumers, in eBay’s words, ‘shop with purpose.’ Klarna isn’t just present at checkout. It now enables resale, too: over half a million eBay listings have already been generated through Klarna’s in-app resell tool since December 2024.
This is where Klarna’s pitch becomes clearer. It doesn’t want to be one of many ways to pay. It wants to be the ecosystem where shopping begins, ends, and — in the case of resale — sometimes begins again.
That expansion has become more visible this year. The company’s partnership with point-of-sale platform Clover, announced last week, will embed it in over 100,000 physical locations in the US, from local shops to service providers. Klarna’s launch with Eurostar places it in travel checkouts across the UK and France. The company isn’t just growing its network; it’s showing up in moments where decisions get made and influence can be sold.
For planners, that raises a new question. If retail media is about reaching people close to purchase, where does a platform like Klarna belong? It doesn’t build brand. It doesn’t drive discovery from scratch. But it does compress the journey — and that has value.
As Elvin puts it, ‘Klarna’s model offers a glimpse into a future where media, commerce and finance increasingly intertwine.’ It may not be alone in that direction, but it’s one of the few actively designing for it.
Behind the media play, a delayed IPO
Klarna’s move into media isn’t just about shaping the funnel, but reshaping investor expectations.
The company recently postponed its planned IPO, following a slump in market sentiment and investor pullback, driven in part by renewed trade war fears and poor performance from listed peers like Affirm, whose valuation has nearly halved this year. Klarna had targeted a $15 billion listing. For now, it’s waiting.
The delay clarifies the stakes. Klarna is still not profitable. It disclosed widening operating losses in pre-float filings, and although its headline loan-loss rate appears conservative, adjusted measures suggest its actual credit risk may exceed the industry average. That weakens the high-growth fintech story and strengthens the case for Klarna’s media strategy, which offers a margin-rich narrative to future investors.
For the company, advertising isn’t an add-on but a signal. Not just that it’s is adapting to consumer habits, but that it’s recalibrating what it wants to be worth.
MediaCat UK contacted Klarna to ask for comment but had not received a response at the time of publication.
