Klarna acquires Inspirock

Global retail bank and payment service Klarna has acquired Inspirok, an online trip planner that enables consumers to explore a destination’s offerings and create personalized itineraries utilizing artificial intelligence and local expertise. Inspirok currently has over 25 million users. Klarna will integrate Inspirock’s capabilities to allow Klarna’s 90 million users to plan and shop for a trip and pay for it in installments, all through the Klarna app.

In a statement, Klarna CEO and co-founder Sebastian Siemiatowski said, “By bringing Inspirock to Klarna, we are bringing the best of Klarna’s smooth customer experience to the travel sector. For customers, this makes the whole journey from inspiration to planning and preparing for a trip simpler, less stressful, and more fun, while enabling our retail partners to better reach and engage with their audiences by offering more personalized content. It’s a natural extension of the benefits Klarna brings to payments and shopping.”

Inspirock’s technology will also give Klarna more advertising and marketing opportunities to its network of 250,000 retailer partners, helping them reach high-intent shoppers with more curated and personalized content catered to their travel plans and preferences.

In a statement, Anoop Goyal, CEO and co-founder of Inspirock said, “We are excited to bring simpler, easier trip planning to Klarna’s 90m global consumers. Our goal at Inspirock has been to make planning a trip fast, fun, and easy. Together we can deliver on Klarna’s ambitions of providing a smooth shopping experience to the travel space in an innovative way. Klarna and Inspirock together can bring great inspiration, tools and shopping experiences, making planning the trip as fun as the actual trip itself.”

Travel is a huge global e-commerce market with strong predicted growth. 66 percent of global travel bookings are made online, and this is expected to grow to 72 percent by 2025, creating a market worth a projected 833 billion dollars according to ReportLinker. As Covid restrictions ease in many regions and travel plans are back in the calendar, Klarna research has shown that 21percent of people put travel at the top of their list of categories they are going to splurge on in 2021 according to a survey by Klarna.