Klarna Teams Up With Coinbase to Add Stablecoin Funding

Klarna, a Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) giant and a global digital bank headquartered in Sweden, announced recently that it is teaming up with Coinbase, the largest US crypto exchange. The announcement, published on Friday, December 19, said that the partnership will allow it to add stablecoins to its institutional funding mix.

Klarna’s statement noted that it already has a broad range of traditional sources of funding, which include consumer deposits, long-term loans, and short-dated commercial paper. However, moving forward, the digital bank intends to raise short-term funding from institutional investors denominated in USD Coin (USDC), the crypto industry’s second-largest stablecoin by market cap.

The announcement said that this will be done through the use of Coinbase’s digitally native infrastructure.

Klarna Found A Way To Access New Institutional Investors Through Stablecoins

Explaining the move further, the Swedish firm said that adding a USDC-denominated funding source will allow Klarna to access USD-like funding directly. As a direct consequence, Klarna will also be able to tap into a new pool of institutional investors.

Commenting on the matter, Klarna’s Chief Financial Officer, Niclas Neglen, said that this represents an exciting first step into a new way to raise funding. He continued by saying: “Stablecoin connects us to an entirely new class of institutional investors, and gives us the potential to diversify our funding sources in ways that simply weren’t possible a few years ago. This is just the beginning of how digital assets can work alongside our traditional funding sources.”

Klarna’s announcement also explained why it chose to work with Coinbase for this initiative. It stressed that the exchange has a proven track record in the crypto space, as it currently powers crypto infrastructure for more than 260 businesses around the world.

Klarna explained that this avenue for using stablecoin for funding is still in its early days, and is still developing at this time. Furthermore, it is also separate from Klarna’s consumer- and merchant-focused crypto and stablecoin endeavors, which it will embark on with continued pace in 2026.

Even so, the payments firm said that the initiative is subject to regulatory, market, and operational risks, and that actual outcomes could differ from expectations.

It is also worth noting that Klarna launched a US dollar-pegged stablecoin last month, becoming the first digital bank to issue a token on a new Layer-1 blockchain developed by Stripe and Paradigm – Tempo. Its stablecoin, KlarnaUSD, is currently live on the Tempo testnet, and is expected to go live on the mainnet in 2026.