Software workers labor union sues Klarna over layoffs of 700

But it’s good that this exists. Darwinism and all that.

Klarna's late fee caps out at $24 for orders over $200.

Swedish damages are usually very small compared to the astronomical sums you see from the US, but I agree that suing for a million SEK seems barely worth the trouble...

I mean, I don't really like Klarna on principle and they seem to have a pretty whacky corp culture, but one has to admit it's convenient.

I think the business proposition from klarna is two things:

1. They have an ongoing relationship with the customers and that allows checkout/payment to be an easier process for customers. If the process is easier customers will be more likely to go through it. This is a big advantage Amazon has from just knowing your details. It also makes Klarna’s business look better to have this relationship with customers and they can maybe offer services too, eg seeing recent purchases in an app.

2. Lots of people like to buy things on credit. This isn’t new. Like credit cards before, Klarna allows people to buy on credit without the store needing to administer all their customers credit accounts. It also means the store can make sales to people who would only buy on credit. I think Klarna compete on price to merchants with credit cards here.

I guess there’s some argument to be made that no one should be allowed to buy things on credit but I think that’s pretty bad for lots of people. I guess you’d want restrictions on how badly one may suffer from failing to make payments and maybe that BNPL providers should better guess whether customers can afford things. I think that would be reasonable. It feels to me that the current incentives are for the cost of risk of late/non-repayment to go mostly into fees for late payers rather than an interest rate or fees to the merchant. Though if you look at credit cards, there’s a pretty big stratification by how likely people are to be good for the money and how wealthy they are in general. That feels like an important difference – klarna offers the same deal to everyone and maybe doesn’t think about affordability but your bank offers different rates/limits to different people. On the other hand those limits mightn’t help much as people get terrible care debt too.

Automatic translation via DeepL:

> We are suing Klarna for an unusually large amount of damages. This is due to the fact that the lawsuit concerns a large number of members," says Martin Wästfelt, head of negotiations, in the press release.

https://www.svt.se/nyheter/inrikes/unionen-stammer-klarna-i-...