Newish BNPL service - Klarna - Cheapies experiences?

Morning Cheapies, I'm curious if anyone has had any experiences with the new Buy Now Pay Later service that seems to have popped up recently called Klarna.

I recently tried to use it as an experiment at PBTech and this didn't go well, so I'm curious if it's a genuine competitor or just something that turned up in the vacuum of Humm disappearing?

My experience might have been atypical - but when attempting to buy a reasonably large purchase from the aforementioned PBTech, it claimed they didn't accept VISA cards from ANZ. Being the largest bank in NZ, I doubted this, so wondered if this was a generic error message indicating they didn't want the risk of a new customer taking on this amount of debt via them. When attempting to query via support, this was useless, as their live chat didn't work and their "normally replies within 1 business day" means of ticketed support hadn't replied after 3 business days, so I opted to close my account.

Related Stores

klarna.com
klarna.com

Comments

  • Might be of use

    Klarna posts on Cheapies
    https://www.cheapies.nz/deals/klarna.com

    OzBargain posts
    https://www.ozbargain.com.au/deals/klarna.com

  • I created a Klarna account recently, but have yet to use it. From what I can tell it's only new in NZ, but it's as big as Afterpay. I'm guessing that as a new customer the purchase was too large. It looks like they do a soft credit check whenever you try to make a purchase, rather than give you a limit like Afterpay does. It's annoying as it's not possible to tell what you're approved for as a new customer without trying to make a purchase and getting declined or approved. It's the main reason I haven't used it.

  • I recently joined Klarna through PB Tech & have made 2 purchases averaging approximately $150 each (totalling approximately $300) & have found the process similar to other buy now, pay later providers.

  • Interesting, thanks both - either of you purchase with an ANZ VISA card on the Klarna side? Any experiences with their support?

    • Yes I used My ANZ Visa debit card. Because I have had no issues so far I haven't needed to contact support.

  • Klarna is big in Europe, and is considered the OG BNPL service - disguised as fintech in order to chase the venture capital/stonks market of previous years. However NZ is a new market for them (and probably an afterthought) and so customer support is rather poor, and the stuff I heard from Ozbargain is that Klarna could mess up your credit score.

    there's no shortage of BNPL providers in NZ, and I would rather shop with Afterpay, Laybuy or Zip.

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