Klarna Partners With Nift, Offering Gifts Throughout Purchase Cycle to Customers

Buy now, pay later (BNPL) giant Klarna has a new trick up its sleeve, according to a June 12 press release.

Klarna has announced a partnership with gifting platform Nift, allowing customers who opt to use the BNPL service to also take advantage of free, or at least heavily discounted, gifts to be offered to ship alongside their intended purchases.

Essentially, at any point during the purchase cycle, a curated selection of products and services will be offered via brands belonging to Nift’s merchant network — notables being Chewy, Fabletics, HelloFresh, Laura Geller, NatureMade, Quince and SiriusXM, among thousands of others.

“We constantly look for innovative ways to elevate our customer experience by making shopping with Klarna more personal, pleasant and rewarding,” said Klarna CMO David Sandstrom. “By partnering with Nift, we’re able to thank our customers for making a purchase with surprise, high-value gifts that introduce them to new brands, products and services that are curated specially for them.”

Klarna specifically mentioned the trending notion that consumers are growing tired of traditional advertising avenues, as shoppers are continuously bombarded by a stream of irrelevant or intrusive ads. With shopfronts and marketers looking for innovative ways to satisfy a more savvy modern consumer, the BNPL provider noted that this partnership could pay dividends while also breaking new ground in ecommerce.

Klarna, Nift Partnership Suggest 20 Different Moments Where Free or Discounted Gifts Can Be Promoted

In an interview with Retail Touchpoints, Nift founder and CEO Elery Pfeffer broke down some of the particulars related to the gifting platform’s integration into the Klarna ecosystem.

“Our thought was, why choose between creating a positive customer experience and generating revenue? All retail media networks try to monetize their users with ads, but instead of that they can just give a gift and improve customer sentiment at the same time. And for brands, instead of spending most of their ad dollars on Meta, they can give users a free or heavily discounted gift,” Pfeffer said.

Pfeffer went on to specify that Nift pockets a cost-per-click fee whenever a gift is selected, and that said gift offer can be inserted at any point during the customer’s purchase journey.

“It could be post-purchase or when something shifts [like reaching a new spending tier within a loyalty program], as well as on the shopper’s loyalty anniversary or birthday; there are almost 20 different moments that we can give Nifts,” he added.

The Nift integration is currently available to all U.S. Klarna users. In the intervening days since the partnership was first launched, Klarna has experienced a 30% click-through rate and a 40% gift activation rate.

Internal Nift data suggested that a vast majority (88%) of customers signing on for a Nift gift rated the received product or service positively. Further, nearly three-quarters (72%) walked away with an improved opinion of the company behind the gift after having received one, and 70% who took advantage of a Nift gift plan to re-engage with the brand again at some point.