Klarna pulls plug on Wavy app

Barely two years after Klarna announced its peer-to-peer payment app called Wavy, the Swedish company pulls the plug on the app. Some functions of the social payment application will be integrated into the Klarna app.

Wavy by Klarna will be discontinued officially on the 6th of August. Users are currently being informed they can no longer use the app after this date, while new applications won’t be accepted. Wavy users can withdraw their credit until the deadline. After that, the Swedish payments provider will automatically transfer the possibly still existing credit to the deposit account.

Klarna’s Wavy app was started by a team that was also behind the German payments app Cookies. This startup had to file for bankruptcy only a couple of months after the official launch in August 2016.

How Wavy by Klarna worked

The idea behind Wavy was that users were tired of downloading new apps, signing up and saving their credit card information everywhere. With Wavy, only one side of the transaction had to sign up, the other party could just click on the link they received in any messaging app and redeem the payment with IBAN without signing up for anything.

Wavy allowed users in 31 countries across Europe to send money betee them without any fees. The app however never attracted the big public. In the Google Play Store for example, it’s currently on a modest 10,000+ downloads.

For comparison: a similar app called Tikkie, launched by Dutch bank ABN Amro, has already over 1 million downloads and that app is available to Dutch consumers only.

Wavy lives forth in Klarna app

The launch of Wavy have not been for nothing , as Klarna wants to use the peer-to-peer payment structure and other functions of the app in its own app. The Swedish company, which has a banking license, recently redesigned both its iOS and Andorid app and also offers a prepaid credit card that will work with Google Pay and soon also with Apple Pay.