Klarna Teams With Buddy to Promote Gen Z Financial Health

Klarna has teamed with budgeting app Buddy to help Gen Z consumers track their expenses.

The partnership between the two Swedish companies lets Buddy users link their expenditures and income from their bank to the app via Klarna’s open banking app Kosma. It comes at a time when younger consumers are embracing digital tools to track their wealth.

The integration “makes it easier than ever before for people to track their expenses, gain valuable insights into their spending habits, and better control their finances,” Buddy said in a news release provided to PYMNTS Thursday (March 2).

According to the release, the new features provided by the partnership let users check account balances in real time, monitor their spending and set up payment reminders from one centralized location.

“Buddy’s mission is to empower young people with the knowledge of how to spend and save sustainably,” said Olle Lind, founder and CEO of the Stockholm-based, Gen Z-focused budgeting app.

“Through this integration we’re helping individuals gain control of their finances by offering an easy-to-use, intuitive budgeting app that connects directly to their bank feed, helping them to manage their money during this difficult financial period and beyond.”

 As recent PYMNTS research has shown, younger consumers are drawn to digital banking tools because of its personalization and convenience, appealing strongly to younger consumers who are looking to help build and manage wealth.

“Younger workers no longer view the 401(k) as their lone path to retirement,” PYMNTS wrote in “Personalization Beyond Traditional Banking To Build Financial Wealth,” a report done in collaboration with NCR.

The report found that 37% of Gen Z workers first invested through their 401(k) versus 54% of millennials and 61% of both Gen X and baby boomers.

The younger generation is more interested in a wider range of retirement resources for their first-time investments. Twenty-two percent said they used mobile trading, 11% invested in cryptocurrency and 10% reported using traditional brokerage accounts.

The news comes during a momentous week for Klarna, which reported Tuesday (Feb. 28) that it was closer to reaching profitability due to ongoing demand in the U.S.A. for its buy now, pay later (BNPL) offering.

“With GMV up 22% YoY and credit loss rates decreasing, we have made significant progress on our new strategy and we’re on a solid path towards profitability,” Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski said in a news release.