Funds firm Klarna has launched a stablecoin, changing into the primary digital financial institution to difficulty a token on Tempo, the brand new layer-1 blockchain developed by Stripe and Paradigm.
In accordance with Tuesday’s announcement, the brand new stablecoin is pegged to the US greenback and is at the moment stay on Tempo’s testnet, with an upcoming mainnet launch set for 2026.
Known as KlarnaUSD, the stablecoin was constructed by Bridge, a stablecoin infrastructure supplier additionally owned by Stripe. The transfer expands Klarna’s long-standing funds partnership with Stripe throughout its 26 world markets.
“Crypto is lastly at a stage the place it’s quick, low-cost, safe, and constructed for scale. That is the start of Klarna in crypto,” mentioned the corporate’s CEO, Sebastian Siemiatkowski.
Klarna is a Swedish fintech specializing in on-line checkout, funds, and short-term shopper credit score. The corporate is common for its purchase now, pay later (BNPL) companies.
A Klarna spokesperson informed Cointelegraph that the corporate is simply starting to discover stablecoin know-how, with an preliminary give attention to “inside makes use of,” together with “lowering the price of worldwide funds inside Klarna.” There are at the moment no plans to combine stablecoins into Klarna’s installment-payment companies.
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The yr of stablecoins
The GENIUS Act, handed in the US in July, established clear guidelines for stablecoins and has helped gas a wave of recent issuances.
In August, self-custodial crypto pockets MetaMask introduced the launch of a stablecoin issued by Bridge and powered by liquidity platform M0. The token, mUSD, launched in September and at the moment has a market capitalization of $844 million.
In October, Western Union mentioned it could use Solana to energy a brand new stablecoin settlement system constructed round its US Greenback Fee Token (USDPT) and a Digital Asset Community developed with Anchorage Digital Financial institution. The token is slated to launch within the first half of 2026.
Amid rising competitors from stablecoin issuers, conventional cost corporations are additionally getting concerned. In July, Visa expanded its stablecoin settlement community by including help for the International Greenback (USDG) token and enabling transactions throughout Stellar and Avalanche.
The broader stablecoin market now stands at roughly $304 billion, led by Tether’s (USDT) at about $184 billion and Circle’s (USDC) at round $74.3 billion, based on DefiLlama information.
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