Klarna has launched KlarnaUSD, a USD-backed stablecoin issued on Stripe and Paradigm's payment-oriented blockchain dubbed Tempo, as the Swedish "buy now, pay later" provider seeks to trim cross-border fees through a fiat-pegged cryptocurrency.
The token is intended to lower international transaction costs, with global payments generating an estimated $120 billion in annual fees, according to a Tuesday press release.
CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski — once a vocal crypto skeptic — said Klarna’s global scale and growing crypto maturity justified the firm's entry into stablecoins. The CEO began to change his tune on crypto earlier this year.
"Crypto is finally at a stage where it is fast, low-cost, secure, and built for scale," Siemiatkowski said, noting that Klarna serves 114 million customers and processes $112 billion in gross merchandise volume annually.
KlarnaUSD is live today on Tempo's testnet and is scheduled to launch on the network's mainnet in 2026, the company said. The stablecoin is issued using Open Issuance, a stablecoin infrastructure product developed by Bridge, a Stripe subsidiary.
Tempo, which launched earlier this year, is designed for high-throughput, low-fee settlement. The protocol raised $500 million at a $5 billion valuation during its Series A round back in October. Tempo also recently made its first ecosystem investment through a $25 million round in developer group Commonware.
Stablecoin adoption
Klarna’s stablecoin debut comes amid worldwide growth in stablecoin usage and adoption. Consulting firm McKinsey estimates that stablecoin transaction volume has reached $27 trillion annually, a level that has encouraged several financial institutions to evaluate or deploy blockchain-based settlement tools.
The supply of USD-denominated stablecoins has also grown significantly, rising from roughly $200 billion at the start of the year to nearly $300 billion today, according to The Block's data dashboard.
Klarna's decision to issue a USD-pegged stablecoin — despite being a European-headquartered financial institution — likely reflects the greenback's dominance in tokenized fiat demand for global onchain payments and liquidity.
Institutional adoption has broadened in parallel. Visa recently rolled out a pilot enabling stablecoin payouts to creators, while large fintech and banks like JPMorgan announced their own stablecoin payment products.
Governments are also pursuing formal regulatory frameworks. The Bank of England has proposed rules for "systemic" GBP stablecoins, and Canada has included stablecoin legislation in its federal budget; the European Union's MiCA regime is also entering its implementation phase.
In the U.S., regulators continue to debate how to implement standards enshrined in the GENIUS Act, America's first federal stablecoin framework.
