Klarna applied for a US bank charter. It’s all about funding costs, not trust 🏦🇺🇸; Cloudflare just made every URL billable 🌐💸
FinTech is Eating the World, 7 July
Hey Everyone,
Good morning & happy Tuesday! Today we’re diving into Klarna, which just applied for a US bank charter (what Klarna Bank is all about & why it’s a smart play + bonus deep dives into SoFi, and The Founder’s Playbook for Winning in the AI Age inside), and Cloudflare that just made every URL billable (what the company’s new Monetization Gateway with x402 protocol at the core is all about & what it indicates about the future of commerce + bonus dives into Coinbase, why Visa and Mastercard’s Agentic AI payment platforms have a volume problem, and Anthropic that Just Told AI Founders Exactly What to Build in 2026 inside). So let’s just jump straight into the awesome stuff 🌶️
Klarna applied for a US bank charter. It’s all about funding costs, not trust 🏦🇺🇸
The news 🗞️ Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) pioneer Klarna KLAR 0.00%↑ just filed an application to establish Klarna Bank USA, and it follows a well-tested playbook: shed the partner-bank model and fund lending with cheaper deposits.
Given that banking is all about trust, the real question now is whether a company built on BNPL can convince Americans to park their savings there.
On the other hand, every fintech lender at scale eventually does the same math and reaches the same answer: partner banks cost too much 🤷♂️ Klarna just showed its work.
Let’s take a closer look at this, understand why it matters (both for Klarna & the wider FinTech industry), and what to expect next.
