What is Klarna _for_? What does Klarna do that others don't? They brand themselves as "We enable you to buy hip shit you don't have the money for [and will become irrelevant before you payed off your debt]". Almost literally [0]
Is it more of the same but dressed pretty or am I missing something?
That said, sometimes a common thing done up well will be successful. Looking at you, Slack.
So Klarna delays having to authenticate with the bank which issued your credit card from the time of purchase, to the time of paying your Klarna "credit card bill".
They also delay sending your invoice until the item is actually shipped, and you then have a 14 day due date. This means returns and refunds have no money exchanged from any of your own accounts, so you don't have to worry about how long it takes for the refund to enter your credit card.
Edit: They also remember you address based on your email and name, across any vendors, so check out is really quick even if it is the first time you shop at a specific site. This is of course great for smaller vendors.
The checkout is super quick only to be frustrated with the payment process later. And since it's Klarna that comes after you to collect payment it can eventually backfire on the business that you ordered from as well.
Also in my country, in Europe, Klarna is mentioned more and more in news articles about consumer debt and predatory lending, so I think their market share among people who keep credit card balances is increasing. They have stopped or kept pending unusually large purchases by me pending a credit check, but they could probably do a lot more to not get a reputation as lumped together with the most predatory consumer loan banks.
The shop you ordered from does not know or care how the transaction is done between you and Klarna.
[0] I should say I can't remember for sure if this was from his time at Klarna or somewhere else, but it was at least illustrative of the kind of people and the culture there.
There are options for paying first after you receive the goods, and this is all handled by klarna so its a huge win for the sellers.
I don't know how they operate in US but in EU-land they have been pretty awesome. Probably 80% of online stores in Scandinavia use them.
On the flip side, they may have been doing something super awesome for the vendors, since it's so widespread that it's used on almost any web site.
I found my experiences more in line with yours, payment is clunky, and seems dubious.