Set up a subscription with Klarna

Learn how to create and charge for a subscription with Klarna.

Use this guide to set up a subscription using Klarna as a payment method.

Available Klarna payment options vary by use case and buyer country

See which payment options are available for your customers before you start your integration.

We recommend using Stripe Checkout to save Klarna as a payment method.

First, you need a Stripe account. Register now.

Use our official libraries for access to the Stripe API from your application:

Create a product and price
Dashboard

Products represent the item or service you’re selling. Prices define how much and how frequently you charge for a product. This includes how much the product costs, what currency you accept, and whether it’s a one-time or recurring charge. If you only have a few products and prices, create and manage them in the Dashboard.

This guide uses a stock photo service as an example and charges customers a 15 USD monthly subscription. To model this:

Go to the Products page and click Create product.
Enter a Name for the product. You can optionally add a Description and upload an image of the product.
Select a Product tax code. Learn more about product tax codes.
Select Recurring. Then enter 15 for the price and select USD as the currency.
Choose whether to Include tax in price. You can either use the default value from your tax settings or set the value manually. In this example, select Auto.
Select Monthly for the Billing period.
Click More pricing options. Then select Flat rate as the pricing model for this example. Learn more about flat rate and other pricing models.
Add an internal Price description and Lookup key to organize, query, and update specific prices in the future.
Click Next. Then click Add product.

After you create the product and the price, record the price ID so you can use it in subsequent steps. The pricing page displays the ID and it looks similar to this: price_G0FvDp6vZvdwRZ.

Create a Checkout Session
Client-side
Server-side

Add a checkout button to your website that calls a server-side endpoint to create a Checkout Session.

index.html
<html>
  <head>
    <title>Checkout</title>
  </head>
  <body>
    <form action="/create-checkout-session" method="POST">
      <button type="submit">Checkout</button>
    </form>
  </body>
</html>

Create a Checkout Session with the ID of an existing Price. Set the mode to subscription and pass at least one recurring price. You can add one-time prices in addition to recurring prices. After creating the Checkout Session, redirect your customer to the URL returned in the response.

When your customer successfully completes their payment, Stripe redirects them to the success_url, a page on your website that informs the customer that their payment was successful. Make the Session ID available on your success page by including the {CHECKOUT_SESSION_ID} template variable in the success_url as in the above example.

When your customer clicks your logo in a Checkout Session without completing a payment, Checkout redirects them back to your website by navigating to the cancel_url. Typically, this is the page on your website that the customer viewed prior to redirecting to Checkout.

Checkout Sessions expire 24 hours after creation.

Caution

Don’t rely on the redirect to the success_url alone for detecting payment initiation, as:

Malicious users could directly access the success_url without paying and gain access to your goods or services.
Customers may not always reach the success_url after a successful payment—they might close their browser tab before the redirect occurs.

Set up a trial

You can create free trials in a Checkout Session by using the subscription_data parameter to provide information about the length, end date, and other trial settings.

Learn how to configure free trials to cancel or pause when they end without a payment method.

Retrieve the subscription
Server-side

After a customer submits their payment details, Stripe automatically creates a Subscription. You can retrieve the Subscription synchronously using the success_url or asynchronously using webhooks.

The decision to retrieve the subscription synchronously or asynchronously depends on your tolerance for drop-off because customers might not always reach the success_url after a successful payment (for example, it’s possible for them to close their browser tab before the redirect occurs). Using webhooks prevents your integration from encountering this form of drop-off.

Handle checkout.session.completed webhooks, which contain a Session object. Learn how to set up webhooks.

The following example is a checkout.session.completed response.

{
  "id": "evt_1Ep24XHssDVaQm2PpwS19Yt0",
  "object": "event",
  "api_version": "2019-03-14",
  "created": 1561420781,
  "data": {
    "object": {
      "id": "cs_test_a1h2mO4eLbjemY0JWW9rCz5dcglwr3M5ldjLOvpGxWD37i1Oi5SeFhSup1",
      "object": "checkout.session",
      "billing_address_collection": null,
      "cancel_url": "https://example.com/cancel",
      "client_reference_id": null,
      "customer": null,
      "customer_email": null,
      "display_items": [],
      "mode": "setup",
      "subscription": "sub_1Op9VFCvDOElLqwO6fs7Na4P",
      "submit_type": null,
      "success_url": "https://example.com/success"
    }
  },
  "livemode": false,
  "pending_webhooks": 1,
  "request": {
    "id": null,
    "idempotency_key": null
  },
  "type": "checkout.session.completed"
}

Keep a record of the value of the subscription key, which is the ID for the Subscription created from the Checkout Session.

Test your integration

Below, we have specially selected test data for the currently supported customer countries. In a sandbox, Klarna approves or denies a transaction based on the supplied email address.

	Approved	Denied
Date of Birth	10-07-1970	03-05-1994
First Name	Test	John
Last Name	Person-au	snow
Street	Wharf St	Silverwater Rd
House number	4	1-5
Postal Code	4877	2128
City	Port Douglas	Silverwater
Region	QLD	NSW
Phone	+61473752244	+61473763254
Email	customer@email.au	customer+denied@email.au

Two-step authentication

Any six digit number is a valid two-step authentication code. Use 999999 for authentication to fail.

Repayment method

Inside the Klarna flow, you can use the following test values to try various repayment types:

Type	Value
Direct Debit	DE11520513735120710131
Bank transfer	Demo Bank
Credit Card	Number: 4111 1111 1111 1111 CVV: 123 Expiration: any valid date in the future
Debit Card	Number: 4012 8888 8888 1881 CVV: 123 Expiration: any valid date in the future