Apple Pay and Klarna Extend Partnership to France and Italy

Sweden-based flexible payments provider Klarna has extended its relationship with Apple to two new countries.

The company’s pay-later products are now available for consumers checking out on Apple Pay in France and Italy, Klarna announced Tuesday (Dec. 9). This brings the Klarna-Apple Pay collaboration to a total of eight major markets, after adoption in Denmark, Spain, Sweden, the U.S., U.K. and Canada.

“We’ve seen incredible excitement from consumers using Klarna on Apple Pay across the U.S., UK, and Canada, and more recently across the Nordics and Southern Europe,” Sebastian Siemiatkowski, co-founder and CEO of Klarna, said in a news release.

“By delivering this innovative capability to even more users and expanding to France and Italy, millions more people can choose the payment schedule that works best for them — all within the Apple Pay experience they already know and love.”

The expanded partnership comes as pay later options are becoming part of consumers’ everyday budgeting strategies amid high prices and tighter monthly liquidity, as recent PYMNTS Intelligence research showed.

Research from the report “The Pay Later Ecosystem Report: Credit Card Installments Outrun BNPL in Summer Travel Surge” showed credit card installment usage had climbed 46% during the survey period compared with April levels. The data showed that one-third of consumers paid for at least one purchase this way, compared to 23% in the spring.

Still, consumers show no sign of abandoning buy now, pay later (BNPL) offerings such as Klarna’s, with usage of that method holding at 14%.

The research also found that consumers who use pay later for both essentials and discretionary categories spent upwards than $1,000 on average over three months, compared with markedly lower totals among shoppers who confined installments to one category.

“Beyond the seasonal surge in travel spending, the report shows that higher-income and younger consumers are driving increased adoption of both BNPL and credit card installment plans,” PYMNTS wrote Tuesday.

“Households earning more than $100,000 annually are 57% more likely to use card installments and 71% more likely to use BNPL than the lowest-income consumers. These users are not turning to pay-later options for budget relief alone.”

The research shows that many consumers are using installments to maximize card rewards, preserve available credit and gain greater control over when and how payments come due. The trend is most pronounced among Gen Z and millennials.