CHI Company Comparison · Finance
Affirmvs.Klarna
Same broad promise, different economics.
Two pay-later companies with similar promises and very different economics: who pays, what happens when borrowers struggle, and how checkout credit becomes a persistent financial relationship.
Affirm FY2026, year to 30 June
- 70%of GMV dollars in interest-bearing monthly loans
- $0late fees since founding; no penalty rate, no compounding
- 40.9%of revenue from net contractual borrower interest
- 5.2mactive Affirm Card holders, 19% of active consumers
Klarna FY2025 calendar; Q2 2026 where marked
- 60.6%of revenue merchant-funded (on a stated attribution)
- 33.5%of revenue consumer-funded, up from 28.6% in 2023
- $422mreminder ($261m) plus snooze ($161m) fees in 2025
- ≤13%of GMV dollars in Fair Financing, its interest-capable product (Q2 2026)
A · The actual difference
Not two ends of one slider. Two architectures.
Affirm and Klarna are usually described as the same kind of company: pay-later lenders that grew up at the online checkout and now want a place in the customer’s wallet. That is accurate about their ambitions. It is not accurate about their economics. The difference lies in the moment at which each company takes money from the consumer, and in who else is paying.
Affirm
A lender first
- More borrower-funded: borrowers pay at least 40.9% of revenue; merchants about a third.
- A much higher share of GMV is exposed to interest-bearing monthly financing (70%).
- Clean penalty mechanics: no late fee, no penalty rate, no deferred or compounding interest.
- More extensive U.S. bureau reporting: every pay-over-time product since 2025.
- Greater historical frequency expansion: 2.1 to 7.0 transactions per active consumer.
- Transaction-specific loans increasingly persist through the Affirm Card.
Klarna
A payments network that lends
- Still primarily merchant-funded: 60.6% of 2025 revenue on a stated attribution.
- A much smaller interest-capable share of GMV: at most 9% in 2025, 13% in Q2 2026.
- Meaningful reminder and snooze economics: $422m together in 2025.
- More limited U.S. bureau reporting by product: only monthly financing is furnished.
- Recent revenue-per-customer growth attributed to product mix rather than frequency.
- A broader banking and membership ecosystem around the card.
Neither architecture can be reduced to “cheaper,” “safer,” or “more customer-friendly” without losing important differences.
B · Who pays
Line names mislead. Payers are what matter.
Revenue rebuilt from filed sub-lines and grouped by who economically pays. Affirm FY2026 (to 30 June 2026) beside Klarna FY2025 (calendar). Shares may not sum to 100% because of rounding.
Affirm · FY2026
Total revenue $4,261.1m
- Net contractual borrower interest40.9% · $1,742.1m
- Merchant-funded discount accretion, booked as interest7.2% · $305.4m
- Merchant network revenue27.0% · $1,149.9m
- Card network revenue (interchange)6.9% · $294.0m
- Gain on sale of loans14.0% · $596.6m
- Servicing income4.1% · $173.1m
- Consumer fees (late, penalty, subscription, service)0
Klarna · FY2025
Total revenue $3,509m
- Merchant-funded (transaction revenue, incl. advertising, plus incremental merchant fees)60.6% · $2,128m
- Fair Financing interest17.6% · $617m
- Reminder fees (after a missed payment)7.4% · $261m
- Snooze fees (paid due-date extension, booked as interest)4.6% · $161m
- Subscriptions $29m (0.8%) and other consumer service revenue $107m (3.0%)3.8% · $136m
- Treasury: interest on debt securities3.8% · $134m
- Gain on sale of consumer receivables2.1% · $73m
Affirm · how to read it
The borrower share is at least 40.9%. The reported interest line (48.1%) is higher because it includes merchant-funded discount accretion — the accounting echo of 0% loans that merchants subsidize. Gain on sale and servicing can monetize borrower-linked receivables, but adding them (about 66%) overstates the borrower share because some sold loans are 0%. Merchants pay 33.9% as reported, about 41% if the discount accretion is reclassified.
Klarna · how to read it
About 33.5% is consumer-funded (35.6% if the gain on sale is attributed to borrowers; 37.0% with treasury income removed from the base). Treating all transaction revenue as merchant-paid is an assumption, not a filed classification. The consumer share has risen about five points in two years, mainly from Fair Financing interest (up $299m) rather than reminder fees (up $63m).
Comparing the two “interest income” lines directly — 48% of revenue against 27% — overstates the gap, because the lines are not the same thing. After removing merchant-funded accretion from Affirm’s line, and treasury and merchant items from Klarna’s while adding its consumer fees back, the nearest pair is about 41% borrower-paid against about 34% consumer-paid. Neither endpoint is firm.
“Merchant-funded” does not establish “cost-free to the consumer.” Both companies bar merchants from surcharging their users, so any recovery of the merchant fee would have to come through prices paid by everyone. That pass-through has not been measured for either company; it is a documented mechanism with an unmeasured effect.
C · Interest exposure
How much volume can bear interest — measured in dollars on both sides.
Affirm · FY2026 GMV mix
The all-0% share fell from 43% (FY2020) to 26% (FY2024) and recovered to 30% (FY2026).
Klarna · Fair Financing share of GMV
Fair Financing is Klarna’s interest-capable product. Some of it is written at 0% APR and that share is undisclosed, so the interest-bearing share of GMV is at most these figures. It grew 82% year on year to Q2 2026. Most remaining 2025 volume was short interest-free Pay Later (about 80%) or Pay in Full with no credit (11%).
Denominator warning
Do not compare Klarna’s “97% interest-free transactions” with Affirm’s 70% interest-bearing GMV. One is transaction count; the other is dollar volume. Klarna’s count also includes Pay in Full purchases that involve no credit. The comparable form is the one above: share of GMV dollars in an interest-capable product.
D · When a payment is missed
No monetary penalty is not the same as no consequence.
United States unless marked; the only market where both companies operate at scale and both sides have sources.
| Consequence | AffirmU.S. | KlarnaU.S., other markets noted |
|---|---|---|
| Late fee | AffirmNone“$0 in late fees” since founding (FY2026 10-K); no fee revenue line FY2019–FY2026. | KlarnaYes, cappedPay in 4: up to $7, aggregate capped at 25% of the order. Monthly financing: up to $35 per missed month. UK, Sweden, Germany, Australia and others carry their own capped or statutory amounts. |
| Reminder fee | AffirmNone | KlarnaYes, where applicableReminder-fee revenue $261m in 2025 (7.4% of revenue), down from 9.0% of revenue in 2024. |
| Paid extension | AffirmNone | KlarnaSnooze fee$161m group-wide in 2025. A requested extension, not lateness. Free due-date change on U.S. Pay in 30 only. |
| Penalty APR | AffirmNone stated“Consumers do not pay more than what they agreed to at checkout, even if they miss or are late on a payment.” | KlarnaNone foundNot confirmed absent; U.S. financing agreements could not be read. Default interest on arrears exists in some German, Dutch and Danish terms. |
| Deferred or compounding interest | AffirmNone“We do not charge deferred interest, compounding interest, or late fees.” | KlarnaProduct-specificNot on Pay in 4 or Pay in 30. Some Swedish (2023) and UK account terms capitalize interest; current availability not established. |
| Bureau record: missed short-term payment | AffirmYes, since 2025All pay-over-time products, including Pay in 4, furnished to Experian (from 1 April 2025) and TransUnion (from 1 May 2025). | KlarnaNo (U.S.)Pay in 4, Pay in 30, Pay in Full and card activity are not furnished in the U.S. |
| Bureau record: monthly financing | AffirmYes | KlarnaYes |
| Collections and charge-off | AffirmYesDelinquent from 4 days; charged off at 120 days past due; recoveries still booked in 2026 on 2022 loans. | KlarnaYesMissed payments roll into the next scheduled payment; collection agencies used (UK confirmed). U.S. charge-off timing not established. |
| Loss of future access | AffirmReportedReported by third-party sources only; no Affirm document found that establishes a rule. | KlarnaStated“You might be blocked from using our payment options in the future” (U.S. help page). |
| Hardship | AffirmDeferral, re-amortizationTotal interest may not exceed the original figure after a modification. | KlarnaMarket-specificUK recovery programme offering to waive 50% of long-overdue balances (2023); take-up unknown. |
Affirm minimizes monetary penalties; Klarna limits bureau exposure on some short-term products. Those are different kinds of consequence.
A $7 fee is certain, immediate and small. A credit-file entry is deferred and uncertain, may matter more, and can also help a customer who pays on time. The record does not support calling either regime harsher overall, and it does not say which a given customer would rather have. Whether interest keeps accruing on a late Affirm loan above the total disclosed at checkout is not established, because no loan agreement could be read.
Klarna’s fee record runs in both directions. Between 2019 and 2021 it extended invoice terms, removed set-up fees and default interest in the Nordics and removed UK financing late fees, saying it had given up about a tenth of revenue to do so (a company claim). In March 2023 it introduced a £5 UK late fee, stating that “a total absence of late fees actually leads to less favorable outcomes for customers.”
E · What borrowing costs
Nearly identical ceilings. Very different exposure.
The headline maximums are at parity. The difference is exposure: about 70% of Affirm’s GMV dollars sit in interest-bearing monthly loans, against at most 9–13% of Klarna’s in Fair Financing. Neither company publishes its average rate or how many customers pay anything at all.
| Product and rate | Interest cost |
|---|---|
| Affirm at 15% (the rate used in its consumer examples) | $44 |
| Affirm at 30% (former ceiling) | $89 |
| Affirm at 36% (ceiling) | $108 |
| Klarna Fair Financing at 13.99% (its representative example) | $41 |
| Klarna Fair Financing at 19.99% (previous example) | $59 |
| Klarna Fair Financing at 35.99% (third-party merchant page) | $108 |
On a like-for-like term and rate the two cost the same, because the mechanics are the same: closed-end, amortizing, simple interest. What is not known for either company is where the typical borrower sits in the range. For Affirm, more than 40% of origination volume was priced at 30–36% in its fiscal first quarter of 2025.
Klarna’s own disclosures also convert a fee into an annual rate: a $4.99 service fee on a $248 off-network purchase over six weeks “results in a 35.68% APR,” and a $2 fee on $160 in 21.97%. These are small sums at high annualized rates on products described as interest-free; Affirm has no equivalent fee. Klarna’s two live pages publish different service-fee ranges, so no single current range is given here.
Why there is no “per $100” headline. Per purchase, Klarna’s customers pay Klarna far less than Affirm’s pay Affirm. But a dollar lent by Affirm stays out roughly three times as long, and interest is a price for time. Normalized per dollar of credit per year, the difference ranges from negligible to about two-fold depending on the method, and no normalization is firm. Klarna’s average also pools a majority who pay nothing with a minority who pay fees or interest.
F · Funding and repricing
Where a rate shock lands depends on how the lending is funded.
“In order to offset our higher funding costs, we are in the process of passing through interest rate increases to continue responsibly extending access to credit to some consumers.”
Affirm shareholder letter, fiscal second quarter 2023 (8 February 2023)
Affirm · capital-markets funded
A documented pass-through
A non-bank funded through bank partners, warehouse lines, securitizations and loan sales; about 47% of its $20.2bn platform portfolio is on balance sheet. Its loans stay out about eleven months and 70% of volume carries a consumer APR, so a rate shock has a visible price to land on.
The ceiling rose from 30% to 36%, rolled out merchant by merchant: 10% of interest-bearing GMV by 30 September 2022 — four months before the written statement — and more than 90% by October 2023. Management later said it had moved “later in the year than we should have.”
Average cost of funds then fell from 7.7% to 5.8%. No statement was found that the ceiling or interest-bearing APRs were lowered; Affirm says its average APR “remained stable” and does not disclose the level. Its margin target was restated to “3.75 to 4% medium-term” by August 2026. The evidence is insufficient to establish whether consumer pricing later moved down.
Klarna · deposit-heavy bank
No comparable episode found
A licensed Swedish bank funding most lending from retail deposits — 88% of funding in Q2 2026 ($11.7bn), more than half fixed-term and slow to reprice. Its book turns over in about 40–53 days, and most of its volume carries no consumer rate to move. Its 2023 language was of insulation (“very low funding costs… despite the sharpest interest rate increases in the last decade”), not pass-through.
No explicit cost-to-price statement was found. That is consistent with the structure; it is not evidence that Klarna never passes funding costs through. Klarna’s earnings-call transcripts and management discussion were not read, its merchant pricing is private, and one undated step in its U.S. ceiling (29.99% to 33.99%) could sit inside the rate cycle.
Since late 2024 Klarna has added forward-flow loan sales and risk transfers; in the U.S., its Fair Financing loans are originated by a partner bank and sold to an investor.
The funding models are converging from opposite ends: Klarna now sells loans as a non-bank would, and Affirm has applied for a bank charter. The structural shield is thinnest where Klarna’s interest-bearing product is growing fastest.
G · From checkout button to wallet
Both moved beyond one-off checkout financing — by different routes.
Affirm
Persistent access to transaction-specific loans
Every purchase remains a separately decided closed-end loan, with no revolving line, committed limit or minimum payment. The Affirm Card moves that lending from merchant checkouts to any Visa terminal, pays now by default and lets a plan be requested before or after a purchase. A standing “purchasing power” estimate sits in the app. A savings account, a pending bank application and lending inside bank apps are being built around it.
Klarna
A checkout network becoming an everyday account
Klarna’s heritage is the merchant-funded checkout. Its 2025 card is debit-first, with pay-later plans approved per purchase. Around it sit a Klarna balance, paid memberships from $4.99 to $44.99 a month (two million paying subscribers), tier-gated cashback and balance yield, savings, peer-to-peer payments, a mobile plan and device leasing. Klarna has also run and withdrawn two earlier U.S. card models.
Both companies moved beyond one-off checkout financing, but they did so through different architectures.
H · Frequency vs. mix
Where each company’s marginal dollar now comes from.
Affirm · transactions per active consumer
Reported series; the six-to-seven step took under a year. Average order value fell (about $323 to about $266) while frequency rose, and Affirm calls frequency its strategy: “Frequency is the path to the top of the consumer wallet.” 96% of FY2026 transactions came from repeat consumers.
Klarna · revenue per customer and mix
Klarna’s finance chief attributes the revenue-per-customer rise to “higher adoption of interest-bearing and subscription-based products.” The frequency figure is a research derivation, not a company metric.
Qualifications. Not every Affirm transaction is borrowing: 39% of its FQ2 2026 transactions were at 0%, and whether pay-now card use is counted is not established, so “more transactions” is established while “more borrowing per consumer” is only partly so. Affirm also had a price-and-mix episode during the 36% rollout (FY2023–FY2024). Klarna’s derived frequency rests on a rounded figure and an active base that includes app log-ins; its U.S. market frequency and card-user intensity are rising.
Neither pattern is evidence of harm or of value on its own. More transactions at 0% cost the customer nothing; a higher take rate from a product the customer chose is a price, not a penalty. What the patterns show is that Affirm’s recent per-customer growth comes from the same customers returning more often at a stable price, and Klarna’s from a growing minority opting into financing or a membership.
I · Returns, disputes and after the purchase
Both pause payments. One interest rule is established; the other is not.
| After the purchase | Affirm | Klarna |
|---|---|---|
| Payment pause during a dispute | AffirmYes“Customers are not responsible for making payments while the dispute is open, and Affirm withholds the disputed amount until the dispute is resolved” (merchant policy). | KlarnaYesBuyer Protection: “Klarna will pause your payment until the issue is solved”; reported returns held for 21 days. |
| Interest already paid, after a return | AffirmNot refunded“Affirm does not refund interest that has already been paid.” | KlarnaNot establishedTwo live help pages were re-checked; neither addresses it. |
| Time limit to raise a dispute | AffirmConflicting languageMerchant policy: “not limited to a post-purchase deadline.” Consumer terms: within 120 days of the purchase confirmation date. | Klarna120 daysFrom purchase, for goods not received or significantly different. |
| Who decides | AffirmAffirm, within 15 calendar days of evidence collection; binding arbitration in the consumer contract. | KlarnaKlarna, “in its reasonable discretion,” after a 21-day merchant window; a merchant that does not respond loses. |
| Payments before delivery | AffirmPayments, including interest, “may be due before the merchant ships the item(s).” | KlarnaProtection clock runs from purchase, not delivery, which exposes long-lead orders. |
| Disputes per order; exclusions | AffirmOne dispute per payment (processor documentation). Consumer-side exclusions could not be retrieved. | KlarnaUp to three disputes per order and partial disputes. Excludes in-store, services and events, gift cards and some other categories. |
Both companies pause payments on a reported dispute, both decide disputes themselves, and neither matches the statutory floor of a U.S. credit card. Klarna’s policy is published to consumers as a named programme; Affirm’s is published to merchants and reserved in a consumer contract. The meaningful established difference is that Affirm’s interest-after-return rule is known and Klarna’s is not — and that question applies to far more of Affirm’s volume, which is a difference of product mix, not of policy. No statement that either company’s after-purchase protection is stronger overall is supported.
J · Credit reporting
In the U.S., the two point in opposite directions.
Affirm · U.S.
All pay-over-time products are furnished, including Pay in 4: to Experian from 1 April 2025 and to TransUnion from 1 May 2025. Before that, only longer monthly loans were reported to Experian. Affirm says the data “will not be factored into consumers’ traditional credit scores in the near term, but may in the future.” On-time payers can build a record; a missed short loan now reaches a file.
Klarna · U.S.
Furnished: monthly Pay over time (financing).
Not furnished: Pay in Full, Pay in 4, Pay in 30 and Klarna Card activity.
In the UK, Klarna has furnished Pay in 30 and Pay in 3 orders to Experian and TransUnion since 1 June 2022 — nearly three years before Affirm’s U.S. expansion.
K · Card architecture
Two cards that look more alike than their companies.
| Card | Affirm Card | Klarna Card2025 debit-first card |
|---|---|---|
| Form | AffirmVisa debit card from partner banks; not a credit card; no revolving line. | KlarnaVisa debit-first card (WebBank in the U.S.); no revolving feature found on the current card. |
| Default | AffirmPay now from a linked account or Affirm Money. | KlarnaPay now from the Klarna balance, “just like any debit card.” |
| Pay later | AffirmA transaction-specific loan requested before or after the purchase; 0–36% APR. | KlarnaPlans chosen per purchase, granted “on a case-by-case basis following a credit check.” |
| Card fees | AffirmNo annual or late fees. | KlarnaNo monthly or annual charges; plans carry the fees or interest of the plan chosen. |
| Scale | Affirm5.2m active cardholders (19% of actives); $2.8bn card GMV in FQ4 2026, about a fifth of GMV. | Klarna6.5m active users in 16 countries (5.4% of actives); card GMV undisclosed. |
| Credit share of card volume | Affirm80–90% of card GMV interest-bearing in FY2024 disclosures; current pay-now share undisclosed. | KlarnaPay-now / pay-later split not published. |
| Surrounding layer | AffirmNo subscription or paid tier. | KlarnaMemberships with cashback, balance yield, service-fee waivers and bundled subscriptions. |
The cards are more similar than their companies’ older checkout identities suggest: both keep debit and pay-now available while layering transaction-specific pay-later access.
The equivalence is of form, not of use. Affirm discloses card volume and its interest-bearing share; Klarna discloses neither, so whether its card has increased customers’ use of credit is not established.
L · Banking and ecosystem
The direction of travel: toward a persistent financial relationship.
Affirm
The Affirm Card; Affirm Money savings with no fees; an industrial-bank application filed in Nevada on 23 January 2026, still pending; lending embedded inside other banks’ apps in development; a rent pilot. No paid tier. The consumer layer is narrower, and the credit relationship is what persists.
Klarna
A Swedish bank since 2017 with $11.7bn of deposits; a U.S. balance that earns interest only with a membership; a fee-free U.S. savings account from June 2026; peer-to-peer payments, a mobile plan and device leasing; an industrial-bank application filed in Utah on 6 July 2026, pending. The layer around payments is broader and includes recurring fees.
The difference is product scope and the presence of recurring fees. No causal link from deposit funding to credit mix is established on either side, and neither company is assessed here as further ahead overall.
M · CHI institutional signals
SP001–SP004, applied to both. Not a count, not a ranking.
| Signal | Affirm | Klarna |
|---|---|---|
| SP001Monetizing access outside the paying entitlement | Not supportedNo paid tier, access fee or metering found; a paid tier was prototyped and not launched. | InconclusiveAn off-network service fee waived by paid tiers exists, but its start date is unknown; the definition fits a merchant-pays network poorly. |
| SP002Greater yield from existing customers | Weakly supportedThe 36% rollout is documented; the first written language followed implementation; no existing loan was repriced. | Weakly supportedSeveral instances from 2023 (UK fee, paid tiers, U.S. ceiling change); one weak predictive sequence; some earlier language ran the other way. |
| SP003Retirement or withdrawal of a legacy product | Weakly supported, occurrence onlyPeripheral products wound down; disclosure at or after the action. | Weakly supported, occurrence onlySeveral retirements, two of them in the customer’s favour; language simultaneous or later. |
| SP004Explicit link from external cost pressure to a customer price | Supported as an occurrence; not predictiveThe 2023 pass-through statement; action began before it was written. | Not supported on the retrieved recordNo cost-to-price statement found; a mainly structural difference with a retrievability caveat. |
No predictive signal is established for either company. The signals are not summed or ranked, and more supported cells do not mean a worse record: Affirm shows one supported cell and Klarna none, yet Klarna has more consumer price points. The framework also runs one way. Klarna’s clearest language-then-action sequence in the record — 2019–2021, when stated intent to reduce late-fee reliance was followed by longer invoice terms and removed set-up fees, default interest and UK financing late fees — is a set of fee reductions that no signal captures.
N–Q · The strongest evidence on each side
What each record shows for customers, and what qualifies it.
Mechanism-specific points from the record. None is weighted against another, and none is a judgement of intent.
NIn Affirm’s favor
- No late-fee architecture: no late, reminder or penalty fee since founding, contractual since 2016.
- No compounding or deferred interest; existing loans were not repriced through the rate rise.
- Fixed-payment transparency: a fixed dollar cost and end date at checkout; hardship changes cap total interest at the original figure.
- Meaningful 0% financing remains: 30% of FY2026 GMV, growing faster than the rest since FY2024.
- Payments are paused and the disputed amount withheld while a dispute is open.
- No public enforcement action naming Affirm was found (search-limited).
- No paid consumer tier launched; one was prototyped in 2023 and not released.
OIn Klarna’s favor
- Merchant-funded economics still dominate: 60.6% of 2025 revenue on the stated attribution.
- A much smaller interest-capable share of GMV: at most 9% in 2025 and 13% in Q2 2026.
- Real historical fee reductions in 2019–2021, at a stated revenue cost; fees are capped, and statutory in some markets.
- No funding-cost pass-through statement found on the retrieved record, consistent with its funding structure.
- A published Buyer Protection policy with a payment pause, a 21-day return hold and partial disputes.
- In the U.S., short-term products are not furnished, so a missed short payment does not reach a credit file.
- No adjudicated finding on pricing or lending conduct in its largest markets and no U.S. enforcement action found; the SEK 500m Swedish sanction concerned anti-money-laundering controls.
PAgainst or qualifying Affirm
- About 70% of GMV is in interest-bearing loans, and more than 40% of FQ1 2025 origination volume was priced at 30–36%.
- The ceiling rose from 30% to 36%, with a documented funding-cost pass-through that began before it was disclosed.
- No documented downward repricing as funding costs fell; the average APR level is undisclosed.
- Frequency rose from 2.1 to 7.0 transactions per active consumer, as a declared strategy.
- Interest already paid is not refunded on returned goods.
- Broad pay-over-time bureau reporting means a missed short-term loan now reaches a credit file.
- The card makes transaction-specific credit available at any Visa terminal.
QAgainst or qualifying Klarna
- Reminder-fee revenue of $261m in 2025 on products described as interest-free.
- Snooze (paid extension) revenue of $161m in 2025.
- A UK late-fee reversal: financing late fees removed in October 2021, a £5 fee introduced from March 2023.
- Fair Financing interest grew from $318m (2023) to $617m (2025), at a U.S. range up to 35.99%.
- The consumer-funded share of revenue rose from 28.6% (2023) to 33.5% (2025).
- A U.S. service fee applies to some on-time, off-network use.
- Paid memberships from $4.99 to $44.99 a month, and an expanding financial ecosystem with less published data on credit use.
R · What remains unknown
Gaps that would change what this page can say.
Each is a disclosure the companies could make.
Affirm
- The average interest-bearing APR, by year
- Whether pricing fell after funding pressure eased
- The current pay-now share of Affirm Card use
- Per-customer total exposure and concurrent-loan counts
- Whether interest accrues above the disclosed total on a late loan
- Consumer-facing dispute exclusions and some servicing and collection practices
Klarna
- When the U.S. service fee began, and whether off-network use was previously free
- The average APR on Fair Financing, and how much of it is written at 0%
- Whether interest or fees are refunded after a return
- The current pay-now / pay-later split on the Klarna Card
- How many customers pay reminder, snooze or service fees
- The current status of account credit in some jurisdictions, and some country-level reporting and collection practices
Conclusion · The actual difference
Same broad category.
Different economics.
Affirm and Klarna increasingly occupy the same broad category, but they monetize it differently. Affirm is more exposed to borrower interest and transaction frequency while keeping penalty mechanics unusually clean. Klarna remains more merchant-funded and exposes less volume to interest-bearing lending, but earns meaningful revenue from late-payment, deferral, financing and subscription mechanics. Both are moving from checkout products toward persistent financial relationships.
That difference is more informative than a simple “which is cheaper” or “which is better” verdict.
Method and source note
What this page is based on.
This comparison draws on CHI’s Affirm and Klarna research dossiers as reconciled in a comparative research package completed in October 2026. Affirm figures come mainly from its FY2026 Form 10-K and shareholder letters (fiscal year to 30 June 2026); Klarna figures from its 2025 annual filings and Q2 2026 disclosures, its U.S. partner guidelines, help pages and published terms. Revenue-by-payer figures are rebuilt from filed sub-lines; line names are not compared directly.
Comparability rules: fiscal periods travel with every figure; shares of GMV are compared in dollars on both sides; Klarna’s GMV includes Pay in Full while Affirm’s excludes card debit volume; Klarna’s “active consumer” includes app log-ins while Affirm’s requires a transaction; per-GMV ratios flatter the shorter book and are not used as headlines; fee and reporting comparisons are U.S.-to-U.S. unless marked. Klarna’s current terms could not be read in most markets, and its earnings-call transcripts were not reviewed. Quotations are reproduced as retrieved from the cited company documents.
Industry-wide findings about pay-later products are not attributed to either company. Nothing here is a finding on legal liability or company intent, and no score, ranking or overall verdict is assigned.
Company background is not repeated here. Each company holds its own separately published CHI assessment: the Affirm investigation and the Klarna investigation.