How Does Klarna Make Money? Fees, Interest and Loan Sales in 2026

Klarna makes money in three ways: transaction and service fees, most of which are paid by the stores that offer Klarna at checkout; interest on its longer-term loans; and gains from selling bundles of those loans to investors. In the second quarter of 2026 those lines brought in $707 million, $266 million and $69 million, for total revenue of $1.042 billion, according to the results Klarna published on August 18, 2026.

So if you pay a Pay in 4 plan on time, you usually pay Klarna nothing. The store does. That explains most of how Klarna makes money, but not the part that’s growing fastest.

How Klarna makes money: the revenue streams at a glance

Klarna reports revenue in three lines. Here’s how each has moved.

Source: Klarna’s full-year 2025 results and Q2 2026 earnings release. Revenue shares are my calculation.

Fees still pay most of the bills, but their share is slipping, from about 71% of revenue in 2025 to 68% in Q2 2026. Interest is holding near a quarter. And the loan-sale line didn’t exist in 2024.

1. Transaction and service fees: who actually pays

When you pick Klarna at checkout, the merchant pays Klarna a fee on the sale. Klarna pays the store upfront and takes on the job, and the risk, of collecting from you. Rates vary by merchant, product and country.

Why would a store pay more than it pays for a card? Klarna’s pitch is that flexible payments lift conversion and order size, so merchants treat the fee more like a marketing cost than a processing cost. Klarna doesn’t publish how much of this line comes from merchants versus consumers, so any exact “merchant share” you see online is an estimate.

Distribution drives growth here. Klarna had more than 1.2 million merchants live in Q2 2026, up 54% in a year, helped by payment platforms such as J.P. Morgan Payments switching Klarna on for merchants they already serve.

Why is Klarna charging me $7.99 a month?

Almost certainly a membership. Klarna launched Klarna Plus in the US in January 2024 at $7.99 a month, CNBC reported, with perks like waived service fees on its One-Time Card and extra rewards points. Klarna rolled out new cashback-focused membership plans in August 2026, so open the app, check which plan you’re on, and cancel there if you didn’t mean to sign up.

Memberships are small but growing quickly. Klarna said paying subscribers reached 2 million in Q2 2026, eight times the level a year earlier, with subscription revenue up more than 600%. Those fees sit in the same transaction and service line as merchant fees, along with consumer fees such as late fees where local rules allow them. The Klarna Card, now with 6.5 million active users across 16 countries, feeds this line too.

2. Interest income: the fastest-growing big line

Pay in 4 is interest-free. Klarna’s longer plans, which it calls Fair Financing, aren’t. They let shoppers spread bigger purchases over months and charge interest, which Klarna books gradually over the life of each loan. The line also includes interest on the cash Klarna holds as a bank.

Interest income rose 39% to $937 million in 2025 and reached $266 million in Q2 2026, up 21% on a year earlier. The US is where this shows up most: US revenue grew 37% to $376 million in the quarter, ahead of US volume growth of 27%, which Klarna attributed to interest income and loan-sale gains.

The catch is timing. Klarna sets aside expected credit losses when a loan is made but earns the interest over months. That mismatch, plus one-off costs tied to its September 2025 stock market listing, is why Klarna reported a $273 million net loss for 2025 even as revenue grew 25%.

3. Selling loans: the newest revenue line

Klarna now sells some of its loans to outside investors. In the US it does this through “forward flow” agreements, where a buyer commits in advance to purchase new loans as they’re made. In Europe it has sold older loan books, including through a new facility in Germany. When a loan sells for more than its value on Klarna’s books, the difference is booked as a gain.

The line brought in $69 million in Q2 2026 and $126 million in the first half, already more than the $73 million Klarna booked in all of 2025. Klarna also said that from the second half of 2026, new US and German Fair Financing loans will be measured at fair value, moving income from interest over time to an upfront gain. Expect this line to keep growing and the interest line to look slower than the underlying lending really is.

Where $100 of Klarna spending goes

Revenue only tells half the story, so I broke Klarna’s Q2 2026 numbers down per $100 that shoppers spent through it.

Klarna books roughly $2.85 in revenue for every $100 of spending. After credit losses, processing and funding, $1.22 is left, which Klarna calls transaction margin. After technology, marketing, customer service and overheads, about 7 cents remains. A year earlier that bottom row was negative: Klarna lost $46 million at the operating line in Q2 2025.

Is Klarna profitable?

Only just. Klarna reported net income of $9 million in Q2 2026, against a $53 million loss a year earlier. Adjusted operating income, which excludes items such as share-based pay and restructuring costs, was $91 million.

For full-year 2026, Klarna guided in August to revenue of $4.08 billion to $4.16 billion and adjusted operating income of $280 million to $300 million. It cut its volume and revenue outlook, citing currency moves and softer spending in Germany, its largest market by volume, while raising its transaction margin outlook to $1.62 billion to $1.65 billion.

Its cost of money is a quiet advantage. Klarna holds a Swedish banking license, and about 90% of its funding comes from low-cost consumer deposits rather than wholesale borrowing. For a side-by-side with a rival built on the same merchant-fee logic, see how Afterpay makes money.

Is there a catch to paying with Klarna?

For shoppers, the disadvantages of Klarna are real but avoidable:

• Longer financing plans charge interest, and the rate depends on the plan and your credit.
• Missed payments can bring late fees where they’re allowed and, depending on your country and product, can show up on your credit file.
• Small plans stack quietly. Four $50 purchases across four apps feel like nothing until they’re all due in the same week.
• Returns don’t pause payments on their own. Report the return in the app so your schedule is put on hold while the store processes the refund.

Why is Klarna under investigation?

Most “Klarna investigation” headlines come from shareholder law firms. A securities class action filed in the US District Court for the Eastern District of New York alleges that Klarna’s September 2025 IPO documents understated the risk that credit-loss provisions would jump after the listing. Shares sold at $40 in the IPO later traded well below that price.

These are allegations, not findings. The case concerns what investors were told, not how Klarna treats shoppers.

My take

Klarna is turning from a checkout button into a bank that happens to own a checkout button. Merchant fees still pay most of the bills, but the growth is coming from interest, memberships and loan sales, which carry different risks. In business model terms, it’s shifting from a transaction-fee model toward a lending model.

The number I’d watch is US transaction margin: 23% of revenue in Q2 2026, against 54% outside the US. If Klarna closes even half that gap in its fastest-growing region, those 7 cents per $100 start to look very different.

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