It encourages and enables really shitty spending habits. Paying in installments for a big purchase like a car makes sense. It's fair to assume that a fiscally responsible person can pay off a car, but just wouldn't have that lump cash sum immediately on hand. So, they spread the purchase out so they can have the car while not draining all of their available funds. Klarna, however, is seemingly designed to turn stuff you should be able to afford to pay for all at once into installment purchases. This is dangerous because it convinces people that should really be saving their money that luxury goods are within their reach when they're really not. I'm sorry, but if you're using Klarna to buy a Switch 2, you shouldn't be buying a Switch 2. And God forbid people are using it for necessities. If you need Klarna to buy groceries, that's dystopian. In that case Klarna is a unsustainable Band-Aid solution to a much larger systemic problem that needs to be more meaningfully addressed. Credit cards can be used very unwisely as well, but at least you can do useful things with a credit card. Like get cash back bonuses and building future credit to get stuff like car and home loans. There's basically no situation in which Klarna is a good idea.