Klarna and Zilch overhauled their paid consumer offerings a day apart, as buy now, pay later (BNPL) providers look for revenue beyond the fees they charge merchants. Klarna unveiled four membership tiers on August 12, 2026, and Zilch launched its first two subscription plans on August 13. Both aim to add a recurring revenue line to the sector’s traditional business model, the merchant fee.
Klarna’s four tiers top out at €44.99 a month
Klarna replaces its Core plan with an Everywhere tier at €4.99 a month, which lets members pay with Klarna without service fees anywhere Visa is accepted. Three higher tiers add cashback and third-party subscriptions.
| Tier | Monthly price | Cashback | Key benefits |
|---|---|---|---|
| Everywhere | €4.99 | not included | Klarna without service fees anywhere Visa is accepted |
| Plus | €9.99 | 0.5% on all purchases | double rewards at partner stores |
| Premium | €19.99 | 1% | up to 12 subscriptions, metal card |
| Max | €44.99 | 1.5% | up to 23 subscriptions, unlimited airport lounge access |
Klarna is dropping service fees across all tiers and, from the Plus tier up, extending cashback to every purchase paid with Klarna. The subscriptions on offer, up to 23 in the top tier, include NordVPN, foodora, Livi, Voi, ClassPass, Headspace, and The New York Times. Klarna says the top tier’s perks are worth up to €6,000 a year and pitches its price against the American Express AMEX Platinum card, which it puts at around €760 a year. The plans are rolling out gradually in 11 European markets.
“A Klarna membership is flexible, transparent, doesn’t depend on debt, and dollar for dollar, there’s nothing in Europe that even comes close on value,” said Sebastian Siemiatkowski, Klarna’s CEO and co-founder.
Zilch adds two plans and two credit products
London-based Zilch, which says it has more than 5 million customers, launched Zilch Extra at £2.99 a month and Zilch Plus at £3.99 a month on August 13, 2026. Extra offers targeted deals, spending insights, and rewards. Plus raises rewards to as much as 6% on debit purchases and 1% on credit purchases, and adds a physical card. Zilch also introduced two credit features:
- Pay Monthly spreads a purchase over three, six, or 12 months, with fees shown before the customer confirms the payment.
- Zilch Advance gives access to up to £100 of salary as much as seven days before payday, repaid automatically when the income arrives.
Zilch ties the launches to its Credit Confidence study of more than 10,000 UK adults: 45% of respondents want rewards from their credit products, and 47% want those products to help them manage their spending.
Subscriptions change how BNPL makes money
BNPL was built on a single revenue line: a fee charged to the merchant, higher than on a card payment, in exchange for bigger baskets and better conversion rates. That revenue depends on volume and gets squeezed as soon as retailers renegotiate. A subscription changes the nature of the income. It recurs, it is largely independent of purchase volume, and the consumer pays it.
Card issuers, merchants, and compliance teams all feel the shift
The move has three consequences. First, it targets premium card issuers, whose pitch rests on a package of perks billed at several hundred euros a year; Klarna goes after them on price relative to advertised value. Second, it affects merchants: a cardholder who pays a subscription to earn cashback pays closer attention to the payment method they use at checkout, which steers transactions toward the card of the provider that rewards them. Third, it raises compliance questions, since Pay Monthly and Zilch Advance are credit products, subject to affordability checks distinct from those that apply to pay-in-three.
Both announcements point the same way. BNPL, until now free for consumers and paid for by merchants, is becoming a subscription billed to the cardholder. The sector is adopting the business model of the premium credit card just as its products come under consumer credit law.