Klarna plugs ChatGPT into its platform for faster product recommendations

Payments and shopping service Klarna is the latest company to announce its integration with ChatGPT.

The company said it is “one of the first brands to work with OpenAI to use its protocol to build an integrated Plugin for ChatGPT,” and is rolling out a personalized shopping experience that provides product recommendations when Klarna users ask for shopping advice, inspiration and product links via Klarna’s search and compare tool.

Here’s how it works: Users install the Klarna plugin from the ChatGPT plugin store and then can ask ChatGPT questions. For example, “I have $150, which headphones can I afford?” and receive a selection of items relevant to that request.

Users can also ask other questions or for more product recommendations. If users tap on the product link, they can also navigate to the product page on Klarna’s search and compare tool to compare prices across its 500,000 retail partners, the company said.

“I’m super excited about our plugin with ChatGPT because it passes my ‘north star’ criteria that I call my ‘mom test,’ i.e. would my mom understand and benefit from this,” said Sebastian Siemiatkowski, co-founder and CEO of Klarna, in a written statement. “And it does because it’s easy to use and genuinely solves a ton of problems — it drives tremendous value for everyone.  Klarna is in a unique position to leverage the best technology and data to help people discover new products and solve problems for consumers at every stage of the shopping journey, and we’ll continue innovating to bring these services to our 150 million consumers.”

The company said the plugin will roll out initially to ChatGPT Plus subscribers in the U.S. and Canada and will then become available in other regions “following a period of safety testing, development and improvement.”

Last month, Klarna revealed that the U.S. was its biggest market after seeing a 71% year-over-year increase in gross merchandise value (GMV) in the U.S. last year compared to 2021. In addition, the Klarna Card went live last June in the U.S. with a 1 million-person wait list.

The new feature comes amid OpenAI’s own announcement that it launched plugins for ChatGPT and connected the chatbot to the internet.

Klarna is among some pretty big tech players getting in on generative AI, including Apple, all things Microsoft and Google.