Does Klarna affect your credit score? What its UK pages say
Klarna's UK help pages, read 8 October 2026, product by product: the check it runs, what it reports, what a late payment does, and where others differ.
Using Klarna can affect your credit score, but signing up does not. Klarna’s UK page says there is no credit check at sign-up, a soft check that does not affect your score for Pay in 3, 6 or 12, Pay in 30 days, Financing and the Klarna Credit Card, and that late or unpaid balances are visible to other lenders.
That is Klarna’s account. This desk read its credit-check help page and its page on what happens if you can’t pay on time on 8 October 2026.
Does Klarna affect your credit score, product by product?
| Product | Check Klarna says it runs | What Klarna says it reports | What Klarna says a late payment does |
|---|---|---|---|
| Signing up, downloading the app | None | Not stated for sign-up | Not applicable |
| Pay in 3, 6 or 12 | Soft | “legally required to report Pay in 3” payment data | Missed amount added to the next payment; late fees, possibly debt collection |
| Pay in 30 days | Soft | “legally required to report” Pay in 30 days payment data | Reminder; late fees and debt collection |
| Financing | Soft | “all purchases” made with Financing | Late and unpaid balances visible to other lenders |
| Klarna Credit Card | Soft, on application | “all purchases” made with the Card | May report “the entire Klarna Credit Card balance” as overdue |
The checks, Klarna says, are performed by TransUnion, Experian and Equifax, and soft checks “will not be visible to other lenders”. The reporting column comes from two pages that word it differently. The credit-check page calls Klarna “a regulated lender” legally required to report Pay in 3 and Pay in 30 days data; the late-payment page says Klarna “reports all purchases” made with the Card, Financing and BNPL. Both can be true, but in the text read the legal-requirement wording covers Pay in 3, Pay in 30 days and Pay Later usage, not the Card or Financing.
Does Klarna do a hard credit check for Financing?
Not on its current page, which lists Financing under soft checks. Two ranking third-party pages say otherwise.
| Point | Klarna UK, read 8 Oct 2026 | Checkmyfile, 26 Apr 2024 | Zable, updated 15 Jul 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Financing check | Soft | “hard credit search” | Hard search |
| Agencies named | TransUnion, Experian, Equifax | Experian, TransUnion | Experian, TransUnion |
| Reporting dated from | 15 July 2026, as a legal requirement | June 2022 | June 2022 |
These are differences between pages, not a finding that either third party is wrong; Klarna may have changed its practice since April 2024. Checkmyfile also says missed payments can harm a score for six years. No Klarna page read states a retention period. How a soft search sits on a file is covered in whether Clearpay does a hard credit check.
What changed on 15 July 2026?
The FCA’s buy-now-pay-later page says it “started regulating Deferred Payment Credit” on that date: interest-free credit repayable in 12 or fewer instalments over 12 months or less. DPC agreements taken out before then remain unregulated. Klarna’s late-payment page says that from 15 July 2026 reporting Pay Later and Pay in 3 usage “is a legal requirement under FCA regulation”. The pages read do not settle Klarna’s own permission status, and this post does not state it; what regulation changed is in what changed on 15 July 2026, and the Clearpay equivalent in whether Clearpay reports to credit reference agencies.
Questions readers ask
Does applying for the Klarna Card affect my credit score?
Klarna’s page lists applying for a Klarna Credit Card among the actions that get a soft credit check, and says soft checks ‘do not affect your credit score’. Paying late is different: Klarna says it may then report the entire Card balance, including purchases converted to Financing, as overdue.
What happens if you miss a Klarna payment?
For Pay in 3, 6 or 12, Klarna says the missed amount is added to the next scheduled payment, and that missed payments ‘can incur late fees and may be sent to debt collection’. Its late-fee page, read 8 October 2026, does not state a fee amount or a cap.
Does using Klarna affect your chances of getting a mortgage?
It can. Klarna’s own page says mortgage lenders ‘could possibly include’ monthly buy-now-pay-later commitments in their affordability checks, and that payment holidays and late or unpaid balances are visible to other lenders. How any one lender weighs them is that lender’s decision, not Klarna’s.
Fin Watch is a publisher, not an authorised firm, and nothing above is advice. Help pages can be rewritten without notice; a wrong entry on a credit file is a matter for the agency that holds it, and a firm’s status is checked on the FCA Register.