Today, Klarna, the fintech giant best known for changing the way people shop and pay, launched a mobile service to its 25 million US customers.

This is more than a new product launch. It marks the beginning of a broader shift: the entry of fintechs into the global mobile market.

Over the past decade, leading fintechs have expanded well beyond their original propositions. From shopping tools to travel booking and insurance, they have gradually built out ecosystems designed to delight and engage customers. The next step to becoming a full-service neobank isn’t a financial service though, it's mobile.

Mobile is one of the few products, alongside banking and payments, that is essential to modern life and used by every consumer multiple times a day. For platforms like Klarna—widely adopted and already embedded in people’s daily lives—it offers a new level of consumer integration, a way to become not just an app on your phone, but the service your phone runs on. 

This is the beginning of fintech’s second act.

Telecom’s Stripe moment

Banking and telecom have a lot in common. Both are regulated, operationally complex, capital-intensive industries. Both involve recurring payments, multi-year relationships, and cumbersome switching processes. And in both, incumbents have historically been slow to innovate, leaving consumers with dated experiences and limited flexibility.

In the payments sector, this deadlock was broken by companies like Stripe, which abstracted complexity and made it easy for new entrants to embed payment products in their platforms. The value Stripe has created for the entire payments ecosystem is enormous, not just for neo-players, but for incumbents. 

When Stripe launched in 2010, Visa could have viewed it as a threat. Instead, Visa embraced Stripe as a partner. By leaning into Stripe’s developer-first tools and embedded commerce capabilities, Visa expanded its reach and relevance in the emerging ecommerce landscape. In turn, Visa’s strategic investment in Stripe helped the payments giant integrate more deeply into the modern digital economy, co-develop tools like one-click buy buttons, and ultimately future-proof its platform. 

At the time of that investment, Visa’s market cap was $199 billion. Today, it exceeds $650 billion.

Now, telecom is experiencing its own “Stripe moment”, powered by Gigs. 

In partnership with the world’s leading mobile networks, Gigs lets any tech company embed connectivity and launch phone and data plans to its customers effortlessly. 

With the technical barriers removed, digital platforms are building directly on top of the global telecom grid via Gigs’ OS, and tailoring mobile services to their users in ways traditional carriers cannot. In turn, incumbents are gaining access to millions of new customers via flexible, digitally distributed offerings delivered through the vast reach of platforms like Klarna. 

It’s a mutually profitable shift with strategic upsides for both sides, and significant benefits for consumers.

Phone plans you can bank on

Among the various sectors now exploring mobile, fintechs are particularly well positioned to win market share. They have several structural advantages that other challenger carriers simply can’t match.

First, fintechs already have large, engaged user bases and strong brand recognition. Where traditional carriers spend hundreds of dollars to acquire each new customer, your average fintech can do it for a fraction of the cost. They can reach users directly through existing channels, with little dependency on paid marketing.

Second, fintechs have access to rich consumer data. This allows them to identify the ideal moment to prompt a switch: immediately after a phone bill is paid, for example, or when a credit card is nearing its limit. For fintechs, users are already KYCed and payments are integrated in the customer journey, which means customers can sign up for a mobile service in a tap. 

Third, fintechs have repeatedly shown they can turn complex, heavily regulated services into clean, intuitive digital products. By partnering with Gigs, they can bring that world-class experience to mobile, letting their users switch instantly and access fast, reliable data at a price point that reflects real value. 

The future of mobile

The timing of this move couldn’t be better. Gen Z and Millennials are reshaping how every industry operates. These generations live life on demand and believe nothing should be more complicated than a few taps on a screen. They’ve become accustomed to the ease of using services like Uber, Netflix and Klarna, and expect every product experience to be frictionless. 

Today, Klarna is delivering something consumers have been waiting patiently for. A radically better mobile experience, natively integrated in an app they love, bundled with unique financial tools and perks, and available in a tap. 

Klarna is one of the first fintechs to launch a fully embedded mobile service, but this is just the beginning. Leading technology companies are reimagining what a mobile service can be, built on Gigs’ operating system. It’s a global phenomenon that is now gathering pace.

For fintechs, this is an opportunity to own and monetize two of the most essential, high-frequency consumer products in modern life. By becoming the platforms through which users pay, transact, connect, and communicate dozens of times each day, fintechs put themselves, to an even greater extent, at the very heart of the digital economy and our daily lives.

This is a foundational shift. One that’s only just getting started.