Exposed: Klarna

Klarna is the world largest Buy Now Pay Later company, operating across 500,000 merchants in 45 countries and serving over 150 million active users. The company tracks detailed shopping behavior including what products consumers browse, what they add to carts, what they purchase, what they return, and how reliably they make payments. Klarna shopping app includes a price comparison feature, wish lists, and a browser extension that collectively monitor consumer shopping behavior across the internet, not just at Klarna-partnered merchants. The company has aggressively expanded beyond BNPL into a shopping super-app that aims to be the starting point for all consumer commerce, capturing data from initial product discovery through purchase and delivery. Klarna AI-powered shopping assistant, launched in 2024, processes natural language shopping queries and purchase intent data, adding conversational shopping surveillance to the behavioral tracking. The company filed for an IPO in 2024 at a valuation of approximately $15 billion, down from a peak of $45.6 billion in 2021. Consumer advocacy groups have raised concerns that BNPL products encourage overspending, particularly among younger users and financially vulnerable populations. A CFPB report found that BNPL users are more likely to be financially fragile, carry credit card debt, and use high-cost financial services. Klarna collection of itemized purchase data across 500,000 merchants creates one of the most comprehensive consumer shopping databases in the world.