Klarna does nothing for trans people
Last summer eased the Riksdag on the rules for changing legal sex, a decision that was meant to make it easier for transgender people to live their lives to the fullest. The change in law made it possible for transgender people – like myself, who had to stand in year-long queues to even get the chance to change their legal gender – to now be able to do so with relative ease. Finally we could live our lives.
But what no one talks about is that the previous process is only a fraction of the work that comes after: A bureaucratic sinkhole.
Swedish bureaucracy today is completely unable to handle the cases that fall outside the framework of the digital infrastructure. You get a list from the Swedish Tax Agency – “good to think about when you change your legal gender” – where they kindly line up the various social actors you are expected to contact to ensure that your social security number move is included in the systems.
It may sound relatively painless, but from my own experience, a legal gender change should rather be equated with being reborn in outer space. As a Jesus figure, you die and then rise again – with the only difference that no one wants you there. No one knows who you are, no information is correct and you have no access to anything, anywhere. Your medical record disappears, your insurance policies cease to apply and your bank ID is blocked so that you can neither access your housing queue nor your savings. All the services you use to make your everyday life work are locked.
And worst of all is Klarna.
Klarna now has, three months after the Swedish Tax Agency’s decision date, still have not managed to resolve my case. Today I have tens of thousands of kroner in an account I can’t access and the technology giant doesn’t care one bit.
The company is hardly known for having a good relationship with either its customers or its employees. 2024 reported SVT that the Swedish Consumer Agency has received roughly 450 reports against Klarna, where around 200 of these concerned their customer service. Several testify about non-response and wrongly demanding money. Klarna’s customer service employees describe their workplace as “a prisonNor do transgender people seem to be high on the Klarna CEO’s priority list Sebastian Siemiatkowski like 2024 was given a salary increase of 860 percentcorresponding to a salary of SEK 227 million.
When I contact Klarna, I am met with the answer that my credit card and savings accounts are locked until I get a new bank ID. I am asked to wait. When my new ID documents arrive, I write again and receive in response that my case must be “escalated to a specialist team”. Then radio silence follows.
For two months time I hear nothing from the company and on emails I get various AI-generated responses from bots pretending to be real people: “I know these types of changes can feel stressful. Don’t worry, we will help you”. I call Klarna’s customer service department, also an AI orchestra that repeats the phrase: “I really understand you, but unfortunately there is nothing I can do”.
The “specialist team” finally contacts me and says I need to submit more evidence – photos of ID documents are needed. Then I am asked to go into the app and change my social security number – but since I now have a new bank ID, the connection to my Klarna account does not work. I’m locked out. They reply that “the problem is related to a third-party app, the best thing you can do is contact their support for help solving this.”. The complaints department is now escalating it to “deep technical support”.
The consequences of a broken digitized and efficiency-addicted society without human contact are big. If you are outside the border of the well-patrolled cyber walls, you are not in Klarnas Sweden. You are a cost that must be eliminated, your existence is listed as a minus item on Klarna’s balance sheet. If you can’t, or if you choose not to apply to the tech companies’ terms, you can count on not even being able to pay your rent. Because here I stand now, eight years later and less free than ever. With the correct letter in the passport but without financial assets.
Amanda Lindbom Edwall is a political scientist & board member of the journal Clarté.
