Klarna and Bolt announced a partnership Monday, which will see Klarna’s payment options integrated into Bolt’s checkout operating system.
This deal means Klarna will show up as a buy now, pay later choice on Bolt devices. Merchants using Bolt can offer Klarna’s Pay in 4 or monthly financing options to shoppers in physical stores, and shoppers can choose that option with a single click. The integration is set to go live later this year, first in the U.S. and then in other markets around the world.
In a statement given to TechCrunch, Ryan Breslow, co-founder and CEO of Bolt, told us that the partnership was “so much bigger than two companies working together.”
“It’s a clear sign that commerce is moving in an entirely new direction,” he said, adding that this will not be another buy-now-pay-later option but, rather, “an entirely new model that offers best-in-class, flexible customer experience with no new contracts or technical lift required.”
Klarna, which has been waiting in the wings to go public since the spring, describes the partnership as a means to drive long-term loyalty for itself and merchants.
“By embedding Klarna into thousands of Bolt merchants, we’re scaling our U.S. footprint and making Klarna available everywhere consumers shop,” a Klarna spokesperson said.
This latest partnership is a big deal for Bolt for other reasons. The fintech has struggled in recent years with legal challenges and upset investors. In March, Bolt founder Breslow returned as CEO after having stepped down in early 2022.
In August, Bolt was reportedly attempting to raise $450 million at a potential $14 billion valuation, but it was an oddball deal with strange terms, including a “cramdown” threat to existing shareholders. There have been no updates on that apparent deal but Bloomberg reported earlier this month that Breslow was once again looking to raise. This time, he’s looking for at least $600 million, half of which would go to Bolt, while the other half would go to his other startup, Love. Breslow has said that Bolt has at least three years of runway left.
Earlier this month, Bolt also announced a partnership with Palantir to launch an AI-powered personalized checkout that remembers the shopping habits of consumers. It wants to expand this checkout across its merchants and within Bolt’s new SuperApp, a “one-click crypto and everyday payments” app, as he described to us in an April interview.
Adding two big names as partners, Klarna and Palantir, is the kind of step that could help clean up Bolt’s reputation as it seeks to raise again.