Klarna Expands Travel Footprint With Qatar Airways Deal

Klarna is expanding its travel industry offerings via a new partnership with Qatar Airways.

Travelers booking flights on the airline can choose one of Klarna’s installment payments at checkout, the companies said in a Tuesday (Oct. 14) news release. The agreement is facilitated by Klarna’s integration with payments tech company Worldpay.

“This partnership makes clear the growing global demand for greater flexibility and control when booking travel,” Klarna Chief Commercial Officer David Sykes said in the release. “With a single integration, Qatar Airways is now bringing Klarna to millions of travelers across 17 countries—providing a smoother, smarter booking experience that fits the way people prefer to pay today.”

Klarna will become available at Qatar Airways’ checkouts across 17 markets in Europe in the coming weeks, according to the release. The offering lets travelers choose to pay in full, pay in 30 days after booking, split the cost of their ticket into three installments, or spread the cost with monthly payments.

“Travel has become one of Klarna’s fastest-growing sectors, driven by increasing consumer expectations for flexibility and convenience at checkout,” the release said.

The company’s past travel-sector partnerships include arrangements with companies like Expedia, Airbnb, and Booking.com.

Such partnerships are growing as consumers face an unprecedented number of ways to pay for travel.

“As soon as we think we’ve got it covered, more payment options come out,” Damien Cramer, senior vice president of global travel at Nuvei, told PYMNTS in May. “That’s the reality of the world that we live in right now.”

The disruption is being driven by a proliferation of alternative payment methods (APMs), which are transforming how airlines, booking platforms and global travelers handle transactions.

With more than 700 APMs and counting available around the world, this growing universe of payment mechanisms now includes digital wallets, real-time bank transfers, QR code payments, loyalty-point transactions and other innovations replacing or augmenting credit cards.

In Southeast Asia, Latin America and Africa, for example, APMs aren’t alternatives; they have become the norm for how people pay.

“From a Western perspective, we think of alternative payment methods as something outside Visa or Mastercard,” Cramer said. “But here in Singapore, and in many emerging markets, they’re actually mainstream methods of payment.”

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