Klarna introduces sub-accounts for savings

The payment provider from Sweden wants to enable its customers to save money. To do this, they can create sub-accounts with savings targets free of charge.

The payment provider Klarna has introduced a new savings function for bank accounts. Users can now create up to three sub-accounts for savings amounts free of charge. In doing so, they have the option of specifying a target amount and a time period. Klarna automatically withdraws the amounts from the main account to the sub-accounts. Customers can also set the intervals at which the money is deposited into the savings pools.

With the optional "rounding up rule" of the Klarna bank card, the provider rounds up the amount to the nearest euro each time a payment is made and transfers the difference to the savings pools. "The Klarna app thus combines shopping and saving in one place, making it even easier to keep track of your finances," says Felix Würtenberger, head of banking at Klarna.

Swedish start-up Klarna is a unicorn, that is, a company with a valuation of more than a billion U.S. dollars that has become best known for its "buy now, pay later" offers, where customers can buy products and pay them off in installments. Consumer advocates have criticized the business model, saying it can lead to overconsumption and debt. According to reports from the Süddeutsche Zeitung the payment provider recently ran into trouble: in a financing round in September, investors valued the start-up at just $6.5 billion. At the end of last year, Klarna still had a total valuation of $45 billion.