I question some of the stats Klarna release.
3 separate sources show that Afterpay gets more traffic than Klarna in the US - Alexaweb, Google Trends and Similarweb.
As to the reason why they're doing less poorly vs apt in the US, they have not been able to get the same traction with retailers for one. Also note their business development manager for the US recently left to join SPT and SPT released an announcement to market about that.. nothing to write home about.
Can picture a few root-causes to why they fare worse than Afterpay:
- Complex multi-tier offering to consumers, hard to know for some what benefit it has over Paypal
- Offering is different at different retailers, some allow you to "slice it", some don't
- Name is subjectively not as good. "Klarna" vs "Afterpay".
- Retailers do not always get paid next business day with Klarna, some 2, 4 weeks etc
- Klarna probably less well capitalised, harder to convince large retailers in new geographies they can handle the volumes
- Klarna business less transparent, given they are an unlisted private company
