Open Banking is expanding into the cryptocurrency market

Klarna, the leading global payments provider and shopping service and Safello, Sweden’s leading broker for cryptocurrencies, announced a strategic partnership to bring Klarna Open Banking to Safello’s brokerage platform for cryptocurrency trading.

„This partnership, which is Klarna’s first entry into the cryptocurrency industry, marks a new era in financial innovation,” according to the press release.

In recent months, Safello has experienced increased growth, both in new users and transaction volume. Starting today, Safello’s more than 180,000 users will be able to directly purchase cryptocurrencies from their bank account, using Klarna’s payment solution.

„This is a match made in heaven. Klarna shares our vision of offering a superior user experience without compromising security and compliance. Besides, open banking is an exceptionally exciting area that will play a key role in our future plans,” says Frank Schuil, CEO of Safello.

„For over 15 years, Klarna has developed a mature and secure financial ecosystem that opens up a range of opportunities for increased innovation and competition. Safello is a textbook example of consumer-centric innovators who can leverage the strength of our developer-friendly open banking infrastructure and we are very much looking forward to the partnership,” says Philippe Rousseau, Senior Commercial Manager at Klarna.

Since the launch of the EU Commission’s Second Payment Services Directive (PSD2) in 2018, the adoption and implementation of open banking have been fraught with unexpected challenges and technical hurdles. Klarna has built one of Europe’s most scalable and proven open banking platforms with access to more than 5,000 banks in 18 countries across Europe.