Klarna urges its customers ‘to shop in a mindful way’

KLARNA, founded in Sweden 15 years ago, says it urges customers to shop in a mindful way. The bank has around 90 million customers worldwide and links with over 200,000 global merchants.

The bank told the Belfast Telegraph it encourages customers to ask themselves three questions: “Do I love it? Will I use it? Is it worth it?” A spokesman said it had a “strong focus on responsible spending”.

“We see more people using the service as consumers increasingly move away from credit cards in favour of debit cards for their day-to-day spend.

“Services like ours allow consumers to make that shift by providing them with occasional access to credit (interest and fee free, and with a regular payment schedule) when needed.”

IRP Commerce, a Belfast-based company which provides the technology for companies to trade online, said Klarna customers were mainly under 45 and tended to spend on average 35% more than others.

Chief operating officer Philip Macartney said IRP had seen a “massive” upsurge in spending online and that it had equipped its clients, including many NI retailers, to accept Klarna.

“In March, driven by customer demand, a desire to maximise the profits for our SME clients and ultimately compete with the major online players, IRP Commerce offered Klarna as an additional payment method across the entire client base (which includes NI, Ireland and the rest of the UK),” he said.

“In the last six months Klarna has been used as the payment method for 5% of all transactions across IRP clients. One of the benefits that Klarna advertises to retailers is a higher average order value and from our stats this is the case with customers checking out with Klarna having a 35% higher average order value.”

He added: “We have seen very little uptake of customers using Klarna aged over 45 and in this case credit/debit cards and PayPal still make up the majority of payment methods for these customers shopping online.

“Globally, Klarna is having a major marketing push and is more popular with millennials and ‘ Gen Z’ online as it allows them to split the payment.

“At IRP Commerce we want our small and medium-sized clients to maximise their online sales so having a suite of payment options to suit the buying patterns of their customers is giving them the best chance of competing with the global players in the e-commerce world.”

He said it offered other payment options such as Apple Pay, ClearPay and Paypal.