[ttam]

Ironically, Klarna, a Swedish-founded company, is pretty big in the BNPL market

according to https://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-buy-now-pay-later-wave...

"In Sweden, home to BNPL provider Klarna, installments accounted for 23% of e-commerce transactions last year."

[danpalmer]

Klarna is huge in the UK too.

I'm inclined to believe another commenter who suggested that millennials and younger don't really like credit cards, and this is a different way to get a similar thing – better cash flow.

[shell0x]

Sorry, I should have said Germany instead of Europe since the European market is pretty diverse.

The German word for debt is schuld(Schulden), which has the same meaning as guilt and is associated with something bad.

[hashmush]

Unsurprisingly, the same word in Swedish is skuld, with the same double meaning.

[grumpy-de-sre]

As an Australian living in Germany I've got to point out that finances in Germany are just as dysfunctional as Australia. Just in completely opposing ways. Both are a burden on sustainable growth and development.

For some examples of Germany's issues it's worth looking at the weak state of retail banking (Deutsche Bank / Commerzbank proposed merger), and the financial scandals.

[imtringued]

The Germans are so spooked by debt they rather hand the debt to weaker countries even though the German economy can sustain much higher debt levels than their neighbors. It's completely backwards.