Klarna to Issue New USD-Pegged Stablecoin

The stablecoin race heats up with another high-calibre member joining the crew. Klarna, a Swedish fintech company, is launching its own stablecoin called KlarnaUSD, a token fully backed by the US Dollar and issued on the upcoming blockchain Tempo.

KlarnaUSD is expected to be available on the mainnet in 2026. Built for scale, it looks like a token custom-created for everyday use that should facilitate faster, cheaper cross-border payments and serve as a viable alternative to traditional banking rails.

KlarnaUSD: Under the Hood

Currently, KlarnaUSD exists on Tempo’s testnet, and we can get a pretty good idea of what the final product might look like.

For starters, it should make Klarna the first traditional bank to issue a stablecoin on Tempo, a blockchain purpose-built for payments and developed by Stripe and Paradigm. It will be minted and managed through Stripe’s Open Issuance Bridge infrastructure and pegged to the US Dollar 1:1.

Stablecoin Rush

But Klarna isn’t solo. Other major payments players have been aggressively diving into stablecoins and crypto-based payments. The big fintech and card networks are increasingly treating stablecoins not just as a niche, but as viable, mainstream payment rails.

PayPal has already rolled out a Pay with Crypto checkout tool for US merchants. As of July 2025, PayPal users can accept payments in over 100 cryptocurrencies. Transactions made with crypto are automatically converted into either fiat or PayPal’s own stablecoin, PYUSD.

And PYUSD’s reach is only expanding. PayPal recently announced that PYUSD will be carried on the Stellar blockchain to support cross-border remittances and provide payment financing for small and medium-sized businesses.

Then there is Visa. In November 2025, Visa unveiled a pilot program that allows businesses to pay creators and gig workers in dollar-backed stablecoins, such as USDC, directly into recipients’ crypto wallets rather than traditional bank accounts or cards.

Mastercard is moving in a similar direction, allowing users to purchase crypto directly via Chainlink while expanding its Crypto Credential feature to include self-custody wallets.

Regulation Is Key

The stablecoin market is booming, with estimates suggesting stablecoin-driven transactions now reach around $27 trillion per year globally. According to a McKinsey & Company report, they could even overtake legacy payments by 2030.

Genius Act and MiCA have added a much-needed regulatory backbone to the field. The former, signed into law in July 2025, is the official US rulebook for stablecoin issuing and payments. Namely, for a stablecoin to be legitimate, it must be issued by banks, credit unions, or licensed non-banks who must publicly disclose their reserve holdings and maintain segregation of reserve assets.

MiCA, on the other hand, has set similarly strict rules, though with its own European flavor. Stablecoins in the EU must be issued by licensed e-money institutions (or banks), and fully backed by liquid reserves held within regulated EU financial institutions.

Together, though, these two laws are the staple of how stablecoins function, bridging the gap between stablecoins and, quote-unquote, real money.

And Klarna?

It goes all in, apparently. The company argues that, with 114 million customers and roughly $112 billion in annual gross merchandise volume (GMV), it already has the scale to disrupt global payment networks. According to the announcement, KlarnaUSD could help drastically reduce the costs associated with cross-border payments.

Sebastian Siemiatkowski, Klarna’s co-founder and CEO and, reportedly, a former crypto sceptic, announced that “this is the beginning of Klarna in crypto,” acknowledging that “crypto is finally at a stage where it is fast, low-cost, secure, and built for scale.”

Will KlarnaUSD ever be available for crypto gambling? We very much doubt it, but there are plenty of tokens better suited for that.