Klarna partners with GoCardless to accelerate US expansion

GoCardless is partnering with Klarna in the US to offer account-to-account bank debit payments to the latter's 21 million US customers.

Klarna will use GoCardless to power its 'Pay in 4' offering, with permission from the user to pull funds automatically from their bank account.

The B2B payments fintech, which has set up in 2011, has been working with Klarna in the UK for the past three years but now has access to a huge seam of new business in the US where Klarna is seeing a rapidly growing customer base.

“We’ve been proud to work with Klarna in the UK since 2018. From the start, it was clear one of our value-adds was our global bank debit network, enabling Klarna to access multiple markets through a single platform," said Hiroki Takeuchi, co-founder, and CEO of GoCardless.

“With card fees rising and the appetite for debt dropping, we predict rapid growth foralternative payment methods. Not only does this include making purchases with Buy Now Pay Later, it also extends to how shoppers prefer to pay off their balances -- namely, through their bank account, whether that’s powered byACH debit or newer technology like open banking. Over the next few years we expect account-to-account payments to challenge the dominance of cards as they tap into changing consumer demand and provide merchants significant benefits in terms of cost, conversion and churn,” he added.

Gocardless entered the US market in 2019 following a $75m fundraise to supercharge its global expansion out of the UK. It opened a San Francisco office as well as a second office in New York City. It now counts the likes of DocuSign and 8x8 as customers alongside Klarna.