Klarna Pursues Everyday Spending With Bolt Mobility App Integration

Users of the European shared mobility platform Bolt will soon be able to use Klarna’s “pay in full” option to pay for car rides, scooters and car rentals.

This capability is now being rolled out and will be fully available across Germany, Sweden, Norway and Finland by the end of June. Car rentals will be available only in Germany, Klarna said in a Wednesday (June 17) press release emailed to PYMNTS.

The capability is enabled by a new partnership between Bolt and Klarna that is bringing Klarna’s payment options into the Bolt app, according to the release.

The integration is built on tokenized payments, so users can pay through their stored credentials rather than reentering their details for each trip.

Customers can choose to pay in full or pay monthly with Klarna.

Kaspar Loog, commerce and payments group product manager at Bolt, said in the release that this integration will make it easier for Bolt users to pay for everyday journeys.

“By adding Klarna, we’re giving our customers another convenient way to pay for the transport services they use most often,” Loog said.

Björn Bryngelson, head of Nordics at Klarna, said in the release that partnership places Klarna in an app that millions of people use each day.

“We are building Klarna into the moments that make up daily life, and few things are more everyday than how you move around your city,” Bryngelson said.

PYMNTS reported in May that Klarna pushed deeper into everyday spending during the first quarter and that deposits, debit usage and point-of-sale financing are a part of the company’s growth story.

Management said during a May earnings call that Klarna is trying to achieve parity and ubiquity with traditional payment networks by offering payment methods suited for different merchant categories including subscriptions, groceries, ridesharing and airlines.

Later in May, Klarna announced that it launched a partnership with the mobility platform Arrive. The company said that collaboration would let drivers pay for parking with Klarna’s pay in full option, which would be available in Arrive’s EasyPark app and would allow for instant payments. Arrive’s parking network encompasses millions of spots in more than 20,000 cities and 90 countries.