Gatekeeping basic necessities behind paywalls is economic violence.
Could I get a loan to help me pay a klarna instalment?
How deeply can we dig this hole?
you are not gonna believe what the banks did in 2008
I knew a guy in college that kept getting new credit cards to pay off other credit cards he had maxed out. I wonder what his credit looks like now.
that’s me, been trapped in that cycle since I had to pay several months’ rent with credit card during covid
aside from some dings due to high credit usage, my score is good. mainly because i have a shit load of cards i opened years ago, so my average account age is high.
I’m not a particularly responsible spender and have a shit ton of debt, but since I make the CC companies a bunch of money by paying balance transfer fees all the time, I’m profitable. So my score is high.
What a stupid world
coming soon: Americans are fucking drowning in debt
neofeudalism here we come!
“Can’t pay rent? Don’t worry we have an even more humiliating solution for you!”
Can’t pay your monthly rent? We can pay it for you with a monthly payment schedule.
Klarna is really pissing me off. I got a refund from a place, and they put that money into some kind of Klarna Wallet or whatever, by default, instead of in my bank account where the money originally came from.
So I go to their stupid site, and select the option to refund to my bank account, and they are warning me this will take up to 7 days! For no other reason than they wanting my money in their account so im tied to their service.
Stay the hell away from Klarna. Im doing that from now on.
Stay the hell away from Klarna
Definitely! Klarna is one of the few parties that won’t cooporate when a Dutch citizen gets government mandated debt settlement. All other debt agencies settle and freeze interests as the state takes control of the debtee’s finances but Klarna just stacks interests like there’s no tomorrow.
The idea behind the scheme is to have the debtee get their personal affairs in order, while an agency (ngo-like) takes care and control of all finances. You get like 50 eur to spend each week but this is also for groceries and all other savings are either used to settle debts, pay rent and other subscriptions and most subscriptions are cancelled with contracts being voided left and right.
It’s a very invasive, but very effective program. Klarna is, as a for-proft debt agency, not having any of it.
it’s insane that they don’t because sweden has basically the exact same program.
wtf, how is that legal? if someone is obligated to pay you some refund, how can they send it to some other private business instead?
I assume because they received the payment through the private business, not directly from their bank.
all you had to do was reach second sentence of their comment and you wouldn’t have to assume.
Yes, you are right. The private business they gave the money to bought it for them.
they put that money into some kind of Klarna Wallet or whatever, by default, instead of in my bank account where the money originally came from.
Yes. That’s how things like that work. Similar to things like the playstore, or app store and such. Apple/Google/Klarna pays for the product, you pay Apple/Google/Klarna back for the product via whatever means, Mastercard, Visa etc that you attach to their store. If they don’t receive the money from you, your account goes into bad standing with Apple/Google/Klarna, not with whoever they bought the product from, because they received their payment. So if you put a stop on the payment from your bank, it will also put your account in bad standing as owing money for a product you “already received”. It’s a shit way to do things, having a middle person, but to avoid such… don’t buy things through a middleman.
Want say “Paramount plus”, buy it from Paramount, not using another service who takes it out of your bank because you gave them permissions to upon using their service.
Thousands of people run into issues because of things like this daily.
Where is Luigi when you need him?
Richest nation in the world.
Does include national debt?
Oh, by the way it’s not coming soon, I could do it right now on the portal I pay my rent on. It’s through Flex.
When it comes to making a purchase of like $500 - $1000, I use affirm. My credit score is 715, and I get a rate of 16% APR. My credit cards won’t give me a lower rate than 30%. I only make 1 purchase like this per year. In 2024 I used it to by an electric bike. In 2025 I used it to purchase all the parts I needed to build a new PC. When I do this, I usually have about half of the money for the thing I’m buying already saved.
The fact like services like this are now doing rental payments is absolutely a direct result of the late stage capitalism hellscape caused by ballooning housing prices and stagnant wages. The fact that housing has been turned into a commodity to make rich people richer is disgusting.
All that aside, these services can be a much better alternative to a credit card when used responsibly and you plan well with your budget.
I need to Klarna my Afterpay payment that I will then Klarna that payment in which I will Afterpay that one… all the way down
bro. Fucking – Think about it. Klarna pay in 3 installments divide the cost by 3 and take payments monthly. Month A, you pay one third. Month B you pay one third of months A and B. By month C onwards you’re consistently paying three thirds or 100% of the rent. You’d only defer yourself the value of one month’s rent over the span of two months. Pointless.
That’s how fucked our economy is. There is a significant number of people so close to the edge that buying an extra 10 days before eviction is the final gasp before becoming homeless.
Yes. Previously the alternative was payday loans, which charged exorbitant interest rates.
People have tried to ban these sorts of predatory loan businesses before but it usually forces people into the hands of organized crime loan sharks who charge even more exorbitant interest and exact brutal punishments on people who don’t pay up.
They should be illegal. The literal only difference between these ‘services’ and the mob is they typically don’t break your knees.
But that’s not the only despicable thing about the mafia’s racket.
These people squeeze the last blood from people who often become homeless anyhow; whereas if landlords had souls, many people could at least keep their housing and not be so vulnerable to predators.
which charged exorbitant interest rates.
Same goes for Klarna if you miss payments.
Unless they are using the “Klarna Glitch” (see Identity theft)
https://frankonfraud.com/the-klarna-glitch-that-isnt-inside-the-new-viral-trend/
Wait til they find out about the “gun glitch” (armed robbery)
That’s how you keep score in bowling.
And isn’t there interest when doing this as well?
No, but there are fees for late payments and other special situations.
Their main income is from the transaction fees that they charge the merchants.
The idea is that people who don’t have money can spend money and create a transaction fee on a sale that wouldn’t otherwise have happened if they didn’t lend the money. That way it’s the same as a credit card that you only pay monthly.
The difference is that the payments can be split, so that the customers can … uh … utilize their entire credit maximum every month…
Needless to say, this kind of credit maximum optimization can end really badly for people who have unstable incomes. The same kind of people who might be tempted to use it.
Yeah, exactly. It’s very predatory.
I don’t think I’m their intended customer demographic. 😅 I use it to keep a tight check on all my purchases. Recently started doing the monthly invoice thing as well, so neat and tidy. One payment every month, then rearrange money in our bank accounts as needed based on shared economy with the wife. Bish bash bosh.
Oh my yes!
I lost interest after like the second sentence. Sounded too much like a middle school math problem.
Yikes, alright, good luck
Fwiw there’s no interest on Klarna where I live 🤷
And where is that? 🤔
Where I live there’s a bit of interest when you postpone your payments further than 30 days. Other than that, no interest. Just like a regular credit card.
Maybe it’s something past 30 days. I haven’t used anything past that. Suppose I talked out of my ass a bit.
😄 No worries mate
Buying groceries in installments is already bad enough, but if you are very good at lying to yourself and very bad at the detecting your own lies, you may be able to convince yourself that you are not going to need to buy groceries for the next four months.
But even this twisted kind of logic does not apply to rent.
Why do I keep getting surprised every time a new height of dumbness gets launched?
It’s not about dumb clients, everyone knows they have to spy groceries and rent, but being between literally being unable to buy groceries and having groceries and debt, many will choose the latter. It’s predatory
Klarna 'bout to find out their business model doesn’t work as well in the US compared to the Nordic countries and EU, as
- People are already up to their neck in debt, putting Klarna to the back of the queue in case there’s a default
- Personal bankruptcy is a thing
Especially the Northern Europe personal bankruptcy is really not a thing, fuck up your finances and you’re never going to see a penny you make (above what you strictly need to live) until everything has been paid back. Debt that is actively being collected also never expires.
There’s a good reason Klarna’s been able to thrive in this environment – getting debt from banks is quite difficult and you have added security from the draconian collections process.
In the US a company ignores credit scores at their own peril. The bankruptcy process is one of the few things that works better in the US than in e.g. my home country Finland.
Klarna is a thing in Germany as well and personal bankruptcy absolutely is a thing here [https://www.verbraucherzentrale.de/wissen/geld-versicherungen/kredit-schulden-insolvenz/privatinsolvenz-in-3-jahren-schuldenfrei-11417] so I don’t know if your second point is that relevant. I’d agree on the first one though.
Serves me right for assuming Germans had a similarly judgemental attitude to people who have ruined their finances. Thanks for the correction.
Finns often have a very puritan attitude to debt (you should fear it like the devil), and in the common discussion it’s often attributed to the ethics of the Lutheran church. That’s at least partially the reason we still don’t have a real personal bankruptcy option. Somewhat surprising to me that a country that shares that value system could be that forgiving to people – I’m a bit envious even 😅
Around here Klarna and other similar companies have long been seen as exploiting the fact that debt is really difficult to get through proper sources, and there’s a matching draconian bunch of collections agencies to support that business model. We’ve mainly been trying to tackle this by regulating the process of giving out loans, instead of giving people the necessary way out and thus giving the corporations an incentive to self-regulate.
If bad credit is actually no longer possible to collect on, it ceases to be good business. Hats off to Germany for having a proper route out of predatory loans.
I german but still hate debt. Why buy something pay off later? Why not just save up monthly then pay once? Same process, same result, 0 fee.
in general:
The depressed poor person has a lack of dopamine and is completely apathetic to poor decision outcomes.
here in specific:
they’re using it for rent, living on the street for a few months to set up your next rent payment is a poor option.
If you go to florid in the US there are PAYDAY loan shops ALL OVER THE PLACE. It’s the most bizarre thing. Interest rates are outrageous. Your check comes out, you can lose 13% of it to get it now… I suspect because drugs…
People are already up to their neck in debt, putting Klarna to the back of the queue in case there’s a default
People in debt (before there is professional help) end up paying the important things first (such as rent) and then choose to pay off the debt that is most within their reach. Klarna is much more likely to be a low amount compared to their creditors.
It might be true their loans are more likely to be payed back while also they might have less to loose in case of a personal bankruptcy.
But that aside, i have no clue on whether Klarna is making a smart move. But i assume they are because companies that are both evil and stupid don’t tend to come far.
Eh, I dunno about that last point. “Evil” is a pretty OP strategy if you have the stomach for it, usually leaves lots of room to survive doing dumb shit. And hot DAMN greed is good at convincing people to do dumb shit!
On the one hand, don’t underestimate their cunning, I do agree with that. But on the other, I’ve never liked the “4D chess” assumptions some folks are so willing to make (not meaning you here), it’s unwise to overestimate it, too.
“Evil” is a pretty OP strategy if you have the stomach for it
I think they do have the stomach for it. And also smart enough to get away with conning people, to know how to not get in trouble with lawmakers, do that fine print just right etc. They act as if they are helping people by offering easy credit while they know they’re not earning money from people who can easily pay them back. They profit off the least capable to keep their finances in order, living of the weak and vulnerable like parasites do.
Hard agree.
Is there a good article about this?
I’ll try to find some and link, but I’m not sure if there are good ones.
Edit: couldn’t find one with quick googling. Guess I’ll have to write one when I have time.
Rent money to rent apartment
Great idea
