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475 points danielstocks | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.229s | source
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mrweasel ◴[] No.27301614[source]
Klarna is a weird company. Last I interacted with them it was clear that they are completely designed to operate within Sweden, but have no idea of how to deal with the outside world. Maybe that have changed.

I talked to Klarna maybe 10 years ago. One of the things I wanted to know was how they dealt with abuse in Sweden, given you just need the social security number of a person and then you can do purchase as that person, and Swedish SSNs are not secret.

The friendly Klarna rep. had no idea what I meant, as you could only get stuff delivered to the address associated with the SSN. Based on how that would be abused in Denmark we suggested ordering a box of random sex toys to any random person in Sweden. The only answer I got was "Why would anyone do that?"

It took less than six month for Klarna to start asking us to block addresses, because they had no way to prevent abuse.

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rightbyte ◴[] No.27305201[source]
Isn't this how post order used to work? You just send a pre-printed form to the company and fill in the address and name? However, with computers automated scams are instant and could have a greater scale. I.e. instead of having some random person have a delivery pizza, you could order 1000 pizzas in 1000 towns.
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1. randomswede ◴[] No.27312777[source]
I suspect that depends on where in the world.

In Sweden, the classic "order by post" required paying at the post office as you picked your parcel up, with only the pick-up slip (with the total to pay) being delivered to the address.

I have seen a few Swedish companies who didn't use the Swedish postal order system, instead opting to send a package with a giro slip and an "pay within X days" inside.

My understanding is that the post office took a small cut of the postal order payment, as a fee for guaranteeing payment. And the companies instead sending a giro slip had enough compliance with paying that it netted more money.