Planning for retirement taxes can be crucial to effectively managing your finances once you’ve left the workforce, especially if you’re still investing to grow your wealth. Worried about capital gains taxes in retirement? Discover 3 capital gains tax strategies for seniors. Click to learn more. Smart Takeaways: Standard rules apply: The once-exclusive home-sale tax break for people over 55 now applies to everyone.Hold longer, tax less: Focusing on long-term investments may help keep realized gains in lower tax brackets.Use smart shelters: Tax-advantaged accounts and strategic loss-offsetting may be viable options for retirees to curb capital-gains tax exposure.Advisors may offer an advantage: A fiduciary financial advisor may be able to help weave these tactics into a broader retirement-tax strategy.If you’re looking for a way to decrease your tax burden, we recommend finding a financial advisor. They can help you understand your options and look for ways to save money on your tax bill, make smart investments, and plan for retirement. Research suggests people who work with a financial advisor feel more at ease about their finances and could end up with about 15% more money to spend in retirement.1  It’s never too late to plan to work toward a comfortable retirement. Try SmartAsset’s no-cost toolto find vetted financial advisors serving your area.Get your financial advisor matches today.  Try SmartAsset’s Financial Advisor Matching Tool Hire a pro. Find and compare vetted financial advisors serving your area, each legally bound to work in your best interest.Get Started This is not an offer to buy or sell any security or interest. All investing involves risk, including loss of principal. Working with an adviser may come with potential downsides such as payment of fees (which will reduce returns). Past performance is not a guarantee of future results. There are no guarantees that working with an adviser will yield positive returns. The existence of a fiduciary duty does not prevent the rise of potential conflicts of interest. SmartAsset.com is not intended to provide legal advice, tax advice, accounting advice or financial advice (Other than referring users to third party advisers registered or chartered as fiduciaries (“Adviser(s)”) with a regulatory body in the United States). The article and opinions in this publication are for general information only and are not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual. We suggest that you consult your accountant, tax, or legal advisor with regard to your individual situation. SmartAsset Advisors, LLC (“SmartAsset”), a wholly owned subsidiary of Financial Insight Technology, is registered with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission as an investment adviser. SmartAsset’s services are limited to referring users to third party advisers registered or chartered as fiduciaries (“Adviser(s)”) with a regulatory body in the United States that have elected to participate in our matching platform based on information gathered from users through our online questionnaire. SmartAsset receives compensation from Advisers for our services. SmartAsset does not review the ongoing performance of any Adviser, participate in the management of any user’s account by an Adviser or provide advice regarding specific investments.  We do not manage client funds or hold custody of assets, we help users connect with relevant financial advisors. Sources:1. “Journal of Retirement Study Winter” (2020). The projections or other information regarding the likelihood of various investment outcomes are hypothetical in nature, do not reflect actual investment results, and are not guarantees of your future results. Please follow the link to see the methodologies employed in the Journal of Retirement study.

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Additional Reading from MarketBeat Media

Klarna’s Crypto Play: A Plan to Fix Its Profit Problem

Author: Jeffrey Neal Johnson. First Published: 11/30/2025. 

Key Takeaways

• The launch of KlarnaUSD is a strategic move designed to fundamentally improve the company’s long-term profitability by lowering operational costs.
• By creating its own payment infrastructure, Klarna is directly challenging the high-fee business models of traditional payment processing giants.
• The company’s massive global user and merchant network gives its new payment technology the scale needed to make a significant industry impact.

Just weeks after its first earnings report as a public company sent its stock tumbling, Klarna (NYSE: KLAR) has made a decisive move into the cryptocurrency space, announcing the launch of its own stablecoin, KlarnaUSD. The timing is notable: the stock is trading well below its $40 IPO price after the Q3 report showed record revenue alongside widening net losses.

That performance has put Klarna’s path to profitability under intense market scrutiny. Against this backdrop, the company’s entry into blockchain-based payments appears less like a speculative bet and more like a calculated, long-term effort to build a more efficient and profitable financial infrastructure for its global operations.

KlarnaUSD Is a Strategic Response to Margin Pressures

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KlarnaUSD is a U.S. dollar–pegged stablecoin designed to function as a digital dollar for payments. The initiative is being built on a new blockchain called Tempo and developed in partnership with payments leader Stripe and venture firm Paradigm. The aim is not merely to launch another product, but to re‑engineer the costly backend of global finance.

This move directly addresses the margin pressures highlighted in Klarna’s recent results. While Q3 revenue reached a record $903 million, net loss widened to $95 million, driven largely by a $235 million provision for credit losses tied to the rapid growth of its Fair Financing product. That expansion, though strategically important, was punished by the market — and the stablecoin initiative is Klarna’s forward-looking response to reduce operating and settlement costs over time.

Aiming to Disrupt the $120 Billion Cross-Border Payments Market

Klarna is targeting a substantial opportunity within the global payments system. The broader stablecoin transaction market exceeds $27 trillion annually, and Klarna is specifically focused on disrupting the roughly $120 billion collected each year in cross-border transaction fees. The current international transfer system—often reliant on the decades-old SWIFT network—remains slow and expensive because payments flow through multiple correspondent banks, each adding fees and delays.

By establishing its own payment rail with a stablecoin on a modern blockchain, Klarna can bypass much of that legacy infrastructure. That should allow the company to process its large transaction volumes at far lower cost; Klarna estimates its current transaction activity incurs about $32.7 billion in fees annually, a cost base the company aims to materially reduce.

Leveraging Scale to Disrupt the Old Guard

Although the immediate goal is internal cost savings, the launch of KlarnaUSD also signals a genuine competitive threat to established payment networks. The business models of companies like Visa (NYSE: V) and Mastercard (NYSE: MA), which rely heavily on processing fees, could face pressure if large merchants and platforms move toward lower-cost rails. What makes Klarna’s threat credible is its scale: a new payment technology is only as powerful as the network that uses it, and Klarna’s network is formidable.

The company’s user base grew 32% year-over-year to 114 million active consumers, while its merchant network expanded 38% to 850,000 global partners. That existing transaction volume gives Klarna the reach needed to make a new payment rail viable. The initiative also aligns with Klarna’s broader ambition to evolve from a payments provider into an all-encompassing digital bank.

Rapid adoption of the Klarna Card — which saw 4 million sign-ups in its first four months — indicates users are willing to try new Klarna financial products. A proprietary, low-cost settlement layer like KlarnaUSD could become foundational infrastructure for a future neobank offering global spending, savings, and other banking services. This launch is one of the first major attempts by a consumer-facing financial institution to leverage blockchain at scale and could set a precedent for the fintech industry.

Why This Crypto Move Matters for Shareholders

The financial benefits of KlarnaUSD are part of a long-term strategy rather than an immediate fix. The stablecoin is not expected to launch on its primary network until 2026, so it won’t resolve the near-term profitability headwinds reflected in recent stock volatility.

Still, the initiative sends an important signal to investors about management’s roadmap. Despite recent price swings, Wall Street analysts maintain a Moderate Buy consensus on Klarna, with an average price target implying meaningful upside from current levels. Management’s investment in cutting-edge payments infrastructure shows a clear commitment to expanding margins over the long run.

For investors focused beyond short-term fluctuations, the stablecoin launch offers a compelling look at Klarna’s long-term playbook: building a more defensible, lower-cost global payments ecosystem that could meaningfully improve profitability as adoption grows. It’s a critical narrative for bullish shareholders to watch as Klarna continues its transition as a public company.

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