Start a payment session

If you're an existing e-commerce partner, you may already be familiar with the Klarna payments API. The request and actions described in this guide use the same API, modified for the in-store scenario. To let your customer pay with Klarna in a physical store, start a new Klarna payments session by sending a POST request to the {apiURL}/payments/v1/sessions endpoint.

Sample request

To start an in-store payment session, include the following in your request:

• the acquiring_channel parameter set to in_store to indicate the payment will happen in a physical store
• the distribution object, including the distribution method set to one_qr and the URL that will receive status updates

A sample request to initiate an in-store payment session.

Extra merchant data

When initiating a payment session, it is required to send EMD as part of the request similar to the sample request.

This guide describes how to send all required EMD data in the request.

Sending customer data

In some cases, you might want to send billing address when creating a payment session in order to improve the payment experience at the point of sale, for example by pre-filling the checkout form with information that is already know and reducing the need for the customer to manually fill in all fields.

{
    "acquiring_channel": "in_store",
    "purchase_country": "SE",
    "purchase_currency": "SEK",
    "locale": "en-SE",
    "merchant_reference1": "ON4711",
    "order_amount": 18000,
    "order_tax_amount": 3000,
    "order_lines": [
        {

In this case, please include the following to send billing address. You can refer to create a session for a full list of supported request information.

• The billing_address object to send billing address information

Distribution object

Success response

In response to your request, you receive:

• session_id, a payment session identifier.
• payment_method_categories, an array that lists the available payment methods. This information is returned by the API, but you don’t need to take any actions related to it.
• the distribution object, containing result_url which needs to be called to receive the QR (link to Monitor the status page)

{
    "session_id" : "{session_id}",
    "payment_method_categories": [
        {
            "identifier": "klarna",
            "name": "Pay with Klarna",
            "asset_urls": {
                "descriptive": "https://x.klarnacdn.net/payment-method/…",
                "standard": "https://x.klarnacdn.net/payment-method/…"
            }

A sample success response to initiate an in-store payment session request.

Error handling

The errors listed below can occur when you initialize a payment session, learn more in Error handling guide.

You can retrieve the error from the distribution result endpoint or by subscribing to a webhook.