Klarna and Stripe bring flexible payments to AI agents through Shared Payment Tokens

Klarna and Stripe Prepare Flexible Payments for AI Agents | PYMNTS.com

By completing this form, you agree to receive marketing communications from PYMNTS and to the sharing of your information with our sponsor, if applicable, in accordance with our Privacy Policy and Terms and Conditions. This capability will be enabled by Stripe's Shared Payment Tokens (SPTs), a payment tool built for agentic commerce, the companies said in a Tuesday (March 3) press release. Stripe's SPTs allow AI agents to use a customer's preferred payment method to initiate purchases, and Klarna's integration with SPTs will add its flexible payment options to those available options, according to the release. Merchants that already offer Klarna through Stripe will be able to offer these options without having to do any additional integration, per the release. Klarna plans to develop more integrations to ensure customers can use its flexible payment options anywhere they shop, according to the release. In some other recent moves in this space, Klarna expanded its partnership with Google to support the Agent Payments Protocol (AP2), an open standard designed to enable secure, AI-driven payments; launched an open standard called Agentic Product Protocol that is designed to make products easily discoverable and understandable by AI agents; and announced its support for Google's Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP), an open source standard designed to synchronize AI agents and retail systems across the digital shopping journey. "As AI agents begin purchasing on consumers' behalf, it's critical that flexible payment options remain available," Klarna Chief Commercial Officer David Sykes said in the Tuesday press release. "By supporting Stripe's Shared Payment Tokens, we're ensuring Klarna is embedded in this next generation of checkout experiences from day one." Stripe Head of Payments Kevin Miller said in the release: "By bringing Klarna to agentic transactions, we are helping businesses lift conversion while giving buyers more flexibility and control in how they pay." Stripe introduced its Shared Payment Tokens in October, saying this solution lets AI agents initiate payments using a buyer's permission and preferred payment method, without exposing credentials. SPTs are programmable by design, reusable and convenient, secure and interoperable, protective against fraud and easy to integrate, Miller wrote at the time in a blog post. They are among several solutions Stripe introduced in 2025 to prepare for agentic commerce.

Klarna Expands Flexible Payment Options Via Stripe Shared Payment Tokens

Klarna, the global digital bank and flexible payments provider, announced that its flexible payment options will soon be supported in AI agent-driven shopping experiences through Stripe?s Shared Payment Tokens (SPTs), making Klarna available in AI-powered checkout flows for US merchants already live with Klarna through Stripe, provided AI shopping agents allow the ability to offer flexible payments at checkout. The integration addresses a growing gap in agentic commerce: AI shopping agents have been defaulting to card-on-file payments by design, effectively freezing out alternative payment methods, including BNPL, from automated checkout flows which leaves consumers with less choice. Stripe's SPTs are a payment tool built specifically for agentic commerce, allowing AI agents to initiate purchases using a customer's preferred payment method, without ever seeing the customer's actual payment details. Klarna's participation means flexible payments options like BNPL will soon be able to pass through that same permissioned layer. For merchants already offering Klarna through Stripe, no additional integration is required. As AI agents increasingly purchase on consumers' behalf, Klarna is ensuring consumers can continue to use their interest-free payments everywhere for everything, with more integrations to come.