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birb_cromble  7d ago (text post)   817 thread views

Qeekly Finance Thread - 2026-09-26

A weekly thread to discuss financial matters - from personal all the way up to global.

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I recently had to pay someone to repair something at my house for a few thousand dollars. As expected, I am not able to pay the repairman via credit card, as they don't want the fees.

But I am able to choose Klarna at checkout and pay Klarna via a credit card, for which Klarna does not charge fees, and thus earn credit card cashback points on a large purchase that I would not ordinarily expect to. This seems like an unsustainable hack, right? I guess pay-as-you-go apps are one of the sectors currently transferring money from private equity to consumers, with the early days of Uber (when it was cheap and heavily subsidized by investor losses) being another recent example. Someone is losing approximately $100 on my transaction, and it seems like the loser is Klarna's investors, right?

Where else are startups currently just handing out free money?

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