Klarna Launches Fresh Suite of Solutions
Klarna has rolled out a suite of solutions aimed at improving the shopping experience for consumers as well as equipping retailers and creators with marketing tools aimed at helping them better engage with audiences and customers.
Marketing is a key area for Klarna’s growth, and the company said it is the company’s fastest-growing revenue stream.
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With the app upgrades and tools, new features include a personalized shopping feed in the company’s app and “smart shopping features to help consumers find the perfect items, and resell items too,” Klarna said in a statement noting that these new products “continue to shape the future of shopping, making it more personal, convenient and enjoyable.”
Klarna said its new AI-powered discovery shopping feed “gives consumers an endless scroll of highly personalized product recommendations to help them and shop items most relevant to them.” The company’s said the feed updates in real-time “with a range of products and deals and becomes increasingly tailored, as it learns more about the user preferences.” Klarna said this tool complements its recently launched “search and compare tool,” which lets shoppers find “the right product at the best price, further evolving the app to become a starting point for every purchase.”
Also, part of the launch is “Ask Klarna,” a personal shopper feature that connects customers to shopping experts via chat or video. The updated platform also has a resell feature in the Klarna app aimed at speeding up the process of creating listings “on secondhand marketplaces by pre-filling product details and images. To resell a past Klarna purchase, consumers tap ‘resell’ on an item from their order history to be automatically taken to a participating re-commerce platform.”
In addition, the updated suite includes “Ads Manager,” which Klarna said harnesses the company’s first-party data “so retailers can reach the right shopper at the right time while ensuring consumers enjoy a more relevant shopping experience.” Klarna said the platform offers brands “an easier and more efficient way to advertise, from ad creation and audience targeting to in-platform reporting for campaign optimization.”
David Sykes, chief commercial officer of Klarna, said the impetus behind updating the app was to mark the company’s 18th year. “Klarna has evolved beyond payments also to become a starting point for shopping,” Sykes told WWD. “The new products we’re announcing further cement our evolution to a global shopping destination for consumers and a growth engine for retailers.”
Sykes said with the new redesign and discovery shopping feed, “we wanted to make it easier for people to search and purchase products on the app while helping them manage their finances through our money management tools. This, in turn, creates tremendous opportunities for retailers to reach a highly engaged audience within our ecosystem.”
Sykes said the refreshed app makes shopping and managing finances easier. “The new discovery shopping feed offers consumers a highly personalized shopping experience which updates in real-time based on their preferences and features such as Ask Klarna and Resell help them find the perfect products across thousands of brands with real experts and resell them too,” Sykes told WWD. “Together, these updates continue to make an even more convenient and enjoyable shopping experience for consumers.”
Sykes said for retailers and brands, the Ads Manager solution helps target the right audience to drive conversions. It also drives revenue for Klarna. A lot of revenue. “Something a lot of people may not realize is that more of the top 100 U.S. retailers partner with Klarna for marketing than for payments,” Sykes said. “In 2022, Klarna’s marketing revenue was up 131 percent, making it our fastest-growing revenue stream. Tools like the new Ads Manager, for example, leverage Klarna’s first-party data so retailers can reach the right shopper at the right time while ensuring consumers enjoy a more relevant and engaging experience. This value exchange drives results for retailers and opens new opportunities for them to reach a high-intent shopper audience.”
Also, part of the refresh is “Creator Shops,” which offers the company’s network of creators the ability “to launch their own storefronts on Klarna.com and the tools to power a consistent shopping experience,” the company said, adding that creators using its recently launched “Creator Platform” can recommend products “from thousands of brands, share shoppable video and photo content, and share their personal shop across their social channels.”
Lydia Tomlinson, a content creator, said the platform “has opened up a new world of opportunities when it comes to affiliate content. The transparency between what I link and what the brand can see has helped me establish new relationships with brands that I have loved and shopped at for years.”
Tomlinson said with the new Creator Shop, “I have the perfect place to showcase everything I’m wearing, using and loving. Now my followers can easily find and shop my latest looks all in one place, saving them the hassle of wondering where to buy.”
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