“Can KLM leverage its loyalty program, open banking infrastructure, and global payments partnerships to reduce transaction costs and generate ancillary financial revenue at scale?”
KLM is one of the world's oldest legacy airlines, operating as a subsidiary of Air France-KLM Group since 2004. Its embedded finance evolution has been driven by cost reduction and traveller experience: the 2019 Adyen open banking integration made KLM an early adopter of PSD2 payment initiation to reduce card interchange fees. More recently, KLM has layered on multi-currency B2B settlement via Nium's airline payments platform and a co-branded corporate card with American Express. On the capital side, KLM has used its Flying Blue loyalty program as collateral for structured financing, signalling the monetisation of loyalty data as an embedded-finance asset.
KLM processes payments through Adyen.
KLM's cards are issued through American Express Sync.
KLM connects to bank accounts through Adyen.
KLM uses Nium for FX and cross-border payouts.
The Embedded Finance Index 2026 maps 6 layers in KLM's stack: Payments / PSP (Adyen); Card issuing (American Express Sync); Open banking (Adyen); Unified APIs (Nium); FX & payouts (Nium); Spend / AP (American Express Sync).
KLM is founded in 1919 and headquartered in Amstelveen, Netherlands.
Get a read on where your own stack stands against KLM and the rest of its category — what they built versus bought, which providers they use, and where the gaps in your own strategy and competitive set actually are.