Buy-now-pay-later giant Klarna has unveiled new brand messaging, created by its in-house design team with the AI-powered global payments network’s new look aiming to “elevate the shopping experience while still building on its distinctive pink brand colour, but with a fresh approach to art direction and motion design”.

The company said its refreshed Curiously Bold brand identity is “firmly rooted in the everyday”, although it clearly wants to make “everyday money moments better and nicer all round”.

It also continues to work “to improve shopping and paying for everyone” while it “cuts through the noise, because clarity matters the it comes to money”.

The new imagery is fashion-focused and powerful with a quirky lifestyle edge but obviously rooted in shopping/buying.

The rethink makes sense given how Klarna has become more than just a payment method and it’s now an entire shopping ecosystem. And huge numbers of consumers are using BNPL. In the recent festive shopping season in the US, BNPL’s use jumped 14%, an Adobe report recently showed. And last autumn, a UK report said 27% of adults were using the payment method.

“People are using Klarna to shop, pay and make smarter spending choices on a daily basis, and we wanted our identity to reflect that in a way that felt relatable and real, but with that delightful twist that Klarna’s known for,” the company explained. “Our iconic Klarna Pink is going nowhere, and we developed an updated colour palette around it to really support it and make it shine”.

So rather than a completely new identity, it sees this as an “evolution of our bold, distinctive Klarna identity in a way that feels relevant for today and reflects how we’ve grown and developed as a company”.

The firm’s Head of Global Brand, Rebecca Jerndahl Tepavac, said that brand has always been “an essential part of the Klarna experience” but with the business growing fast, it needed to develop its brand identity “so that it could work flexibly across a company of our size and scope, and feel relevant across our multiple markets”.

And Design Director James Cullen added that one of its key creative concepts “was the idea of making magic from the mundane making the ordinary feel extraordinary, in a way that felt smart and intentional. You can see this everywhere from the offbeat twist in our typography, to our playful approach to art direction, where we’ve really stripped back to tell stories in a really straight up way”.

Meanwhile, Copy and Storytelling Director Flo Wales Bonner said the firm also “developed our tone of voice and visual identity at the same time, guided by the same creative principles—so that they both have a feeling of offbeat optimism, they both feel relevant, and they’re also really clear and direct”.

She said that regarding the tone of voice, “straight talking was really important—it’s what people need when it comes to money matters. This is balanced with playful, confident wit, to lift the experience and make it feel smart, delightful, and rewarding”.