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Metrics type: Supporting Metrics • Category: Payment Gateway

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At a glance

Percentage of Klarna BNPL attempts that Klarna approved and the merchant captured. Klarna underwrites consumer credit risk; this rate primarily reflects Klarna’s risk-model decisions, not card-network availability.

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Calculation

Calculated automatically from your Klarna data. See the At a glance summary above for what the metric tracks and the worked example below for a typical reading.

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Worked example

“Helle Mode” 7-day window ending 02 May 26. What the merchant should notice:
  1. 89.4% blended is just below the healthy 90% line. Slice it drags the blended; without Slice it the rate would be 91.5%.
  2. Slice it at 71.6% is normal. The consumer-credit-check requirement creates 25-30% friction; customers abandon when they see “we’ll check your credit”.
  3. A drop in Pay in 30 success rate from 91% to 87% would alert. Common cause: Klarna’s risk model tightened (post-credit-event response), or merchant attracted higher-risk customers (e.g. influencer pushing to younger demographic).

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Sibling cards merchants should reference together

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Reconciling against the vendor’s own dashboard

Where to look: portal.klarna.com → Reports → Conversion for approval rate by product. Why our number may differ: Cross-connector reconciliation:

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Known limitations / merchant FAQs

Why is Klarna success rate lower than card? Klarna underwrites consumer credit; some customers don’t qualify. Cards have universal availability (anyone with a card and funds). The 5-10pp gap is structural. Slice it at 70% is normal? Yes. The credit-check friction is intentional; Klarna avoids over-extending credit to thin-file consumers. The trade-off: lower conversion but lower default rate, which keeps Klarna’s loss ratio healthy. Klarna can a customer be approved for Pay in 30 but rejected for Slice it? Yes routinely. Pay in 30 is short-duration credit (lower risk); Slice it commits the customer for 6-24 months, requiring tighter underwriting. Approval rate dropped 5pp overnight, what changed? Likely Klarna risk-model update. Klarna periodically tightens or loosens; sudden swings affect all merchants. Check Klarna merchant communications. Can I appeal a Klarna decline? The customer can appeal directly with Klarna. Merchants cannot override; this is consumer-credit regulation. Customer denied by Klarna falls back to card, do I lose them? Klarna integrations typically present a “try a different payment method” fallback; conversion of fallback is moderate (40-60%). Helle Mode’s fallback to Stripe captures roughly half of Klarna-declined customers.

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Tracked live in Vortex IQ Nerve Centre

Success Rate is one of hundreds of KPI pulses Vortex IQ tracks across Klarna and 70+ other ecommerce connectors. Nerve Centre runs the detection layer; Vortex Mind investigates the cause when something moves; Ask Viq lets you interrogate any number in plain English. Start for free or book a demo to see this metric running on your own data.