Klarna and Stripe bring BNPL payments to AI agents as automated shopping takes hold

Klarna and Stripe team to bring BNPL payments to AI agents

This content has been selected, created and edited by the Finextra editorial team based upon its relevance and interest to our community. Klarna will soon be made available in AI-powered checkout flows for US merchants already live with the Swedish firm's BNPL options through Stripe - provided the AI shopping agents allow the ability. The system uses Stripe's Shared Payment Tokens (SPTs), 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. David Sykes, chief commercial officer, Klarna, says: "The infrastructure being built for agentic commerce will define online checkout for the next decade. "As AI agents begin purchasing on consumers' behalf, it's critical that flexible payment options remain available. By supporting Stripe's Shared Payment Tokens, we're ensuring Klarna is embedded in this next generation of checkout experiences from day one."

BNPL Providers Aim to Stay in the Checkout as AI Agents Take Over Shopping | 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. Both Klarna and Affirm announced separate integrations with Stripe designed to extend their pay-later products into agentic commerce flows. The mechanism in both cases is Stripe's Shared Payment Tokens, a tool introduced in October that allows AI agents to initiate purchases using a customer's preferred payment method without exposing sensitive credentials. Klarna's integration means its flexible payment options will be available at U.S. merchants that already offer Klarna through Stripe, without requiring merchants to do any additional integration. Affirm's expanded partnership is structured similarly, with the goal of eventually bringing its pay-over-time options into what the companies described as AI-driven commerce experiences. The urgency behind both deals reflects a structural concern: AI agents, left to their defaults, tend to route transactions through stored card credentials. That pathway works, but it bypasses the financing options that BNPL providers have spent years embedding at the point of sale. Klarna Chief Commercial Officer David Sykes framed it directly: "As AI agents begin purchasing on consumers' behalf, it's critical that flexible payment options remain available." Stripe's Shared Payment Tokens are the connective tissue making these integrations possible. They are designed to be programmable, reusable and interoperable, built for environments where a software agent, rather than a human, is navigating checkout. By integrating this token layer, BNPL providers ensure their products surface as available options even when the buyer is automated. The Affirm integration is designed to let shoppers see the total cost upfront and choose a repayment plan even when an AI assistant is managing the browsing and purchase process, while allowing merchants to accept those payments on the back end through Stripe. The SPT framework also extends reach: any merchant that offers Affirm, regardless of whether they have a direct Stripe integration, will eventually be able to accept these transactions in agentic flows when supported by the AI platform. For Klarna, the Stripe partnership is one part of a broader infrastructure push. The company has also expanded its partnership with Google to support the Agent Payments Protocol, an open standard for secure AI-driven payments, and launched its own Agentic Product Protocol to make its products readable by AI discovery systems. The pattern across all of these moves is the same: get into the agent's decision environment early, at the protocol and token level, before commerce flows calcify around simpler payment defaults. The BNPL sector's urgency is grounded in data about where consumer behavior is heading. PYMNTS Intelligence research found that 49% of interested consumers would allow an agentic AI assistant to complete both routine and larger research-driven purchases under the right conditions. That conditional openness willing to delegate purchasing, but only within recognizable financial guardrails is precisely the dynamic BNPL providers are trying to serve. Consumers who already rely on installment plans want those options available regardless of how they shop. Earlier PYMNTS Intelligence data shows that 25% of bridge millennials used BNPL in December 2025, up 56% from the prior month, even as overall BNPL usage dipped to 14%. That demographic concentration, younger, digitally native, already accustomed to delegating financial tasks overlaps substantially with the population most likely to adopt AI shopping agents. Losing visibility with that cohort at the agentic checkout would represent a significant erosion of the conversion advantages BNPL has built. McKinsey projects that by 2030, the U.S. B2C retail market alone could see up to $1 trillion in revenue orchestrated through agentic commerce. For BNPL providers, the question is not whether that market materializes, but whether their products are in the payment option set when it does.

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.