Klarna is a little too Swedish. There's a ton of fraud related issues they haven't considered. When a former employer wanted to start using Klarna in Denmark, we asked Klarna about fraud, and how they deal with it. The answer: They don't, not really in any meaningful way.
In Sweden you can just order random stuff online and have it show people door step, and have Klarna send the bill to the victim, who now has to deal with returning the 50 dildos you ordered for them.
Even when Klarna works as intended we have experience that they would make us, the webshop, pay for an item, when they failed to get the payment from the customer. The whole idea of Klarna is that they are responsible for collecting the money from the customer.
I am part-owner of a large swedish webshop company, and we happen to use Klarna. Klarna is simple and will probably work for most companies.
While it's unusual that there are cases of fraud, it does happen. Every time it has happened, it's enough for the victim to do a police report and just tell Klarna that they have been victims of fraud, and Klarna will remove the invoice due to their fraud policy. Obviously, the police report is meaningless as the police does nothing.
I wish there was a better alternative to Klarna, but sadly, I know of none.
Saying that as someone who witnessed a startup burn through 10 mil in a year back in the first .com bubble. That was one opulent journey, I can tell you that.
I had never heard of Cookies (I really don't follow fin-tech), but being Swedish Klarna is pretty close to being a household name. Cool to see them mentioned.
This sentence scared me:
After filing for bankruptcy, Swedish tech company Klarna approached the team behind Cookies so that they can join another fintech company.
To me the above really sounds as if Klarna filed for bankrupcy, but it refers to Cookie (which is perhaps clear if you know the background and/or context).
Their initial launch was to be confined to Germany (as far as I got told by a friend who works at the company), likely reduced the companies visibility.
Dominance of US in internet should be challenged more by europeans so we need european startups to grow a bit more over here.