Is There Enough Room for All of Affiliate in Klarna’s New Tunnel?

Written by Brook Schaaf

A little item in Practical Ecommerce’s latest tool tool roundup caught my eye — and spun my mind. “BNPL provider Klarna launches ‘Sign in with Klarna.'” 

Klarna’s documentation clarifies (or should we say Klarna-fies?): “Sign in with Klarna is a social login feature built for shopping. It lets customers quickly and safely sign up for your platform using their Klarna account information. Sign in with Klarna makes highly personalized shopping experiences possible by leveraging consented user data. This means no more passwords and a checkout that’s been pre-filled, saving time for shoppers and boosting conversion.”

The idea isn’t new. In fact, I remember in 2000 when my first boss at Zappos.com declaimed against Microsoft’s Passport.com, which promised to “make signing in and shopping online faster, easier, and more secure.” I’m not sure why it never quite caught on. Nowadays, it seems the popular single sign-on options are Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, and maybe Apple, none of which directly support the shopping experience. Shopify provides you a handy shortcut with a text message, though God help you if you change your phone number. 

Klarna’s approach may finally give life to this idea, pushing more commerce in the direction of Amazon’s smooth, (almost) one-click shopping. The tradeoff for the merchant, which apparently still gets all the data — unlike on Amazon — is likely worthwhile. 

For our purposes, it would seem a logical addition to affiliate sites. While these sites don’t have payment information, they, especially reward sites, do have names and addresses. So conversions would be likely to increase and tracking would be easier to credit. No reason for the shopper to go through the affiliate next time, unless his or her relationship is particularly strong, in which case the affiliate deserves credit. 

It seems to me merchants should acknowledge the reality of shared shoppers and capitalize on these innovations to reduce friction for shoppers, offer targeted deals to consumers, and stay competitive in the ever-changing e-commerce landscape.