People already put rent on their credit card to pay it off in chunks. This is just Klarna tapping in that market
this post was submitted on 11 Feb 2026
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People already put rent on their credit card to pay it off in chunks. This is just Klarna tapping in that market
People using CC to pay rent isn't reassuring, it's more alarming. Paying for housing on short-term, high-interest credit is financial insanity and implies profound dysfunction if not desperation.
Well if you don’t pay they can evict you very fast. So if you need the money yesterday you have to accept 12%pa
Hence the implied desperation
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I think the intention was to get the points. But, I'm sure some are not as diligent as they should be.
You get charged a 3% transaction fee for using a credit card, which more than wipes out the value of any points you might earn.
Tap for spoiler
(Excluding the Bilt card, which used to let you earn 1% on rent and they processed it like an ACH/bank debit, so no credit card fee. But they recently restructured their rewards and it’s not nearly as easy to profit now.)
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I tend to forget that salaries are paid weekly in the US. Then this makes at least somewhat sense.
Not typically. Every other week is more common.
Well, I’m used to monthly, both for rent and for salaries. So biweekly is still strangely often to me.
But thanks for correcting me.
Monthly or biweekly are both common in the US for salaries. And biweekly being the most common for hourly. Really just depends on your employer.
But, bills always come in monthly, which makes the monthly budgeting simple. A biweekly bill would fuck over a bunch of people as occasionally it would hit three times in a month.
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But then why isn't rent paid weekly?
Where I live, weekly or fortnightly pay is more common than monthly, and rent is almost always paid weekly.
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A ton of property management companies charge like 3-5% “convenience” charge for using a credit card, meaning even with cash back you lose some money.
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My credit card gives me 3% on rent. So I just put it on the card on the first, pay it off on the second. Give a 3% discount on rent every month. Lol
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bro. Fucking -- Think about it. Klarna pay in 3 installments divide the cost by 3 and take payments monthly. Month A, you pay one third. Month B you pay one third of months A and B. By month C onwards you're consistently paying three thirds or 100% of the rent. You'd only defer yourself the value of one month's rent over the span of two months. Pointless.
That’s how fucked our economy is. There is a significant number of people so close to the edge that buying an extra 10 days before eviction is the final gasp before becoming homeless.
Yes. Previously the alternative was payday loans, which charged exorbitant interest rates.
People have tried to ban these sorts of predatory loan businesses before but it usually forces people into the hands of organized crime loan sharks who charge even more exorbitant interest and exact brutal punishments on people who don’t pay up.
They should be illegal. The literal only difference between these ‘services’ and the mob is they typically don’t break your knees.
But that’s not the only despicable thing about the mafia’s racket.
These people squeeze the last blood from people who often become homeless anyhow; whereas if landlords had souls, many people could at least keep their housing and not be so vulnerable to predators.
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Dystopian fucking timeline. Around every corner there seemingly waits billionaires waiting to fuck ppl over
Yet more proof that "richest country in the world" doesn't mean what Americans think it means.
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"Can't pay rent? Don't worry we have an even more humiliating solution for you!"
Can't pay your monthly rent? We can pay it for you with a monthly payment schedule.
Rent money to rent apartment
Great idea
How much later? Can I get 50 years on that cause I'm gonna take that option.
Sell 100-year bonds to Klarna and use the money to pay your installments.
Klarna 'bout to find out their business model doesn't work as well in the US compared to the Nordic countries and EU, as
- People are already up to their neck in debt, putting Klarna to the back of the queue in case there's a default
- Personal bankruptcy is a thing
Especially the Northern Europe personal bankruptcy is really not a thing, fuck up your finances and you're never going to see a penny you make (above what you strictly need to live) until everything has been paid back. Debt that is actively being collected also never expires.
There's a good reason Klarna's been able to thrive in this environment – getting debt from banks is quite difficult and you have added security from the draconian collections process.
In the US a company ignores credit scores at their own peril. The bankruptcy process is one of the few things that works better in the US than in e.g. my home country Finland.
Klarna is a thing in Germany as well and personal bankruptcy absolutely is a thing here [https://www.verbraucherzentrale.de/wissen/geld-versicherungen/kredit-schulden-insolvenz/privatinsolvenz-in-3-jahren-schuldenfrei-11417] so I don't know if your second point is that relevant. I'd agree on the first one though.
Serves me right for assuming Germans had a similarly judgemental attitude to people who have ruined their finances. Thanks for the correction.
Finns often have a very puritan attitude to debt (you should fear it like the devil), and in the common discussion it's often attributed to the ethics of the Lutheran church. That's at least partially the reason we still don't have a real personal bankruptcy option. Somewhat surprising to me that a country that shares that value system could be that forgiving to people – I'm a bit envious even 😅
Around here Klarna and other similar companies have long been seen as exploiting the fact that debt is really difficult to get through proper sources, and there's a matching draconian bunch of collections agencies to support that business model. We've mainly been trying to tackle this by regulating the process of giving out loans, instead of giving people the necessary way out and thus giving the corporations an incentive to self-regulate.
If bad credit is actually no longer possible to collect on, it ceases to be good business. Hats off to Germany for having a proper route out of predatory loans.
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I'm no Maoist but those 'land reforms' are starting to sound pretty good right now.
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Financing is bad at the best of times.
No, it's not. Financing is a great tool, and used wisely and with knowledge of interest rates and total cost, can elevate you quite a bit in life.
This however is predatory lending, and it should not be used ever.
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This is a financially naive and reductionist take, approaching financial illiteracy. Applied correctly, financing allows you to preserve liquidity while still leaving funds in accounts with higher returns. Financing also provides a hedge against inflation, e.g. real estate.
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My dad paid 140k to buy a lot and build a house about 25-30 years ago. It's back up for sale...$475k. in that time, minimum wage went from $5.15 an hour to $7.25 in that save time frame.
People are still working 40+ hour weeks, and healthcare is somehow costs MORE, along with everything else.
I don't fucking think immigrants had anything to do with any of that.
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Could I get a loan to help me pay a klarna instalment?
How deeply can we dig this hole?
you are not gonna believe what the banks did in 2008
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coming soon: Americans are fucking drowning in debt
neofeudalism here we come!
Wiggling another jenga block out of the tower.
So what happens if you keep leveraging klarna on klarna on klarna and then just buy a van, skip the bill, and go off grid?
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