A Klarna stop shipping request means Klarna has flagged one of your orders as high risk, including suspected fraud, and you must hold the goods and answer Klarna’s email about the order’s shipment status within 24 hours. Klarna’s merchant support page on stop requests says a banner appears on the order at the same time, telling you the goods should not be shipped. Klarna’s cooperation conditions add that you follow the instruction immediately upon receipt. If you ship anyway and the order proves fraudulent, Klarna can reclaim the payment from you, so the loss lands on your books. Hold first, reply second, argue about the flag last.

Most merchants who get burned by a stop request did not choose to ignore it. The email reached an inbox nobody checked over the weekend, or a third-party warehouse shipped the parcel before anyone told them to pull it. Treat the request as a dispatch problem that happens to carry contract consequences.

What a Klarna Stop Request Means

When a customer pays with Klarna, Klarna takes over the right to collect payment and carries the credit risk. Section 1.2 of the Klarna Merchants General Terms and Conditions gives Klarna the exclusive right to receive payment for those Claims and says it assumes the credit risk for non-payment, except where the agreement says otherwise. A stop request is how Klarna limits that risk before the goods leave your building. If a stolen identity sits behind the order, Klarna wants the parcel on your shelf, not on a fraudster’s doorstep.

Klarna describes the stop request as the notification it sends when an order is deemed high risk. That wording matters. Klarna does not have to prove fraud before it asks you to hold. A high risk score is enough. Some flagged orders turn out to be stolen identities. Others are genuine shoppers whose order looked unusual. Your first move is identical for both groups.

What Klarna tells the shopper

Klarna states that it does not tell the customer an order has been stopped. A customer whose purchase Klarna rejects sees a declined purchase pop-up in checkout instead. That gap leaves the customer contact to you, and the rules on that contact are covered further down. If shoppers are hitting that pop-up before an order is ever created, our article on Klarna declines at checkout covers the other side of the same risk engine.

Why the money comes back to you if you ship

Section 4.1(a) of the General Terms gives Klarna the right to be repaid by the merchant for Claims it deems, at its reasonable discretion, fraudulent or illegitimate. Section 4.1(b) adds a second route where delivery went to an address Klarna did not approve. Section 1.4 already bars delivery to a recipient or address other than one Klarna pre-approved. Ship a stopped order to a fraudster and you have handed over the goods while Klarna keeps the right to pull back the payment. Our breakdown of how Klarna claim repayment works walks through how those repayments are deducted.

Where the Klarna Stop Shipping Rule Lives in Your Agreement

The clause most merchants are looking for sits in Klarna’s Cooperation agreement complementary conditions, under the heading “Stop order/fraud or suspicious circumstances.” It says that when Klarna discovers fraud or suspicious circumstances relating to a transaction, Klarna may instruct the merchant to stop the order process and shipping. The merchant agrees to follow those instructions immediately upon receipt, provided Klarna gives them within twenty-four (24) hours of Capture of the applicable Claim.

Read that last part closely. The 24 hours in the cooperation conditions measure Klarna’s window to issue the stop, counted from Capture. They do not give you a day to think about it. Once a valid instruction lands, your obligation is immediate. The separate 24-hour clock on Klarna’s support page covers your reply about shipment status.

The General Terms version in force

The Klarna Merchants General Terms and Conditions page currently shows Version 24.11 with a latest update of 24 February 2025. The Australian address for those terms now redirects to Klarna’s international page. In that version, Section 3.6 obliges the merchant to use best efforts to help Klarna mitigate or stop fraudulent transactions and says any request for assistance must be actioned without undue delay. Older copies of the terms and some market-specific agreements number their clauses differently, so check the signed agreement for your own market rather than relying on a clause number you saw quoted somewhere.

Other clauses that sit behind the request

• Section 1.4. No delivery to a recipient or an address other than as pre-approved by Klarna, unless agreed otherwise.
• Section 3.6. Best efforts to assist with stopping fraudulent transactions, actioned without undue delay.
• Section 4.1(a) and (b). Repayment of Claims deemed fraudulent, and of Claims where delivery went to an unapproved address.
• Section 9. The merchant provides information Klarna requests, and failing to do so may be treated as a material breach for compliance purposes.
• Section 10.1(a). Either party may terminate immediately for a material breach that is not cured within ten (10) days of notice, where a cure is possible.

The 24-Hour Window Explained

Two clocks run at once. The hold starts the moment the request arrives. The reply to Klarna’s email about shipment status is due within 24 hours. Merchants who treat the 24 hours as time to finish the hold are reading the wrong clock, and the parcel that ships at hour six is still a parcel that shipped against an instruction.

Where the hours disappear

Trace the path a request takes inside your business. It arrives by email and as a banner in the Merchant Portal. Someone has to see it. That person has to find the order in your store platform. They have to reach whoever controls dispatch. The picker has to find the parcel and pull it from the outbound cage. Every handoff costs time, and an instruction that lands at 4 p.m. on a Friday in a shop that checks email on Monday has already failed.

Outsourced fulfillment adds a handoff and often a time zone. A merchant in California using a warehouse in Pennsylvania loses three hours of the working day before the warehouse even opens its tickets.

What stopping looks like at each stage

The last row is the one owners want to skip. Klarna’s email asks for the shipment status, and an honest answer that the parcel was delivered before the request arrived is far stronger than silence. If Klarna later reclaims the Claim, your timeline is what supports a challenge.

Pending Orders in the US and UK

Some merchants never receive a stop email because their integration uses Klarna’s pending order feature instead. According to Klarna’s pending orders documentation, the feature is only available to merchants in the US and UK and has to be activated per account. Klarna sets a flagged order to pending, holds it, and asks you not to ship until the review ends.

The figures in that guide are specific. Klarna says the assessment usually takes 4 to 8 business hours and could last a maximum of 24 hours. When it finishes, Klarna sends an HTTP POST to the notification URL you supplied, and it repeats that notification every 10 minutes for 24 hours or until your server replies with a 200 code. Klarna recommends checking the order’s fraud status to confirm it matches the notification before acting.

Overriding Klarna’s decision

The pending orders guide lets you overrule Klarna in either direction, with a cost. To cancel an order Klarna accepted, you cancel it through the API. To accept an order Klarna rejected, you capture it within 4 hours after receiving the POST request. Klarna states plainly that accepting a rejected order means you take over any fraud risk related to it. Capture a rejected order only when your own evidence is strong enough that you would accept that loss on your own balance sheet.

What pending orders change for your team

With pending orders, the hold lives in your order data rather than in an inbox. That is safer, but only if your store platform or warehouse system reads the fraud status before printing a label. Test that link. A connector that ignores pending status will ship the parcel just as fast as a missed email would.

Who Gets Stop Requests Most

Three kinds of store see Klarna stop shipping requests far more than others. Each needs a slightly different defense.

Electronics and high-resale goods. Phones, laptops, consoles, graphics cards, sneakers and designer bags convert to cash fast, so stolen identities gravitate to them. These stores get the most requests and need the shortest path from email to warehouse floor.

Instant digital delivery. Gift cards, software keys, game credits and downloads leave the moment the order completes. A stop request that arrives an hour later has nothing left to stop. These merchants need their own screening before release, because a hold after delivery is impossible.

Sudden spikes from new customers. A viral post, a flash sale or a new marketing channel brings a wave of first-time buyers. Most are real. Fraud rings hide in the same wave. These stores need to watch for clusters during the spike, such as repeated shipping addresses, repeated phone numbers or near-identical names.

Order traits that deserve a second look

Klarna does not publish the signals behind a high risk score. You do not need its model to review an order well. In the stop requests we work on, fraudulent orders tend to share a handful of traits.

• The shipping address differs from the billing address or belongs to a parcel forwarder.
• The first order from the account is several units of an easy-to-resell item.
• Express shipping was chosen on an expensive basket.
• The email address is brand new or looks machine-generated.
• Several orders arrived within minutes with small variations in name or address.

No single trait proves fraud. Three or four on one order are a strong reason to leave it held even if Klarna later clears it. Genuine flagged orders tend to look different. The customer has bought before, the details match across orders, and the basket fits their history.

Holding Orders Step by Step

Your position after a request will be one of two. Either the flagged orders were genuine and you can show it, or you complied and closed the gap the fraud came through. Both positions start with a hold you can prove.

1. Log the request. Record the time the email and banner arrived, every order number named, and the Klarna order reference for each.
2. Hold every named order. Stop each one at the stage it has reached using the table above, and note the time and the person who placed the hold.
3. Search for siblings. Look for other orders sharing the same shipping address, phone number, email pattern, device or IP data if your platform logs it, or the same unusual product mix. Hold those too while you review. Fraud rarely arrives as a single order.
4. Sort the flagged orders. Put each one into likely fraud, likely genuine or unclear, using the traits listed earlier.
5. Reply to Klarna within 24 hours. Answer the shipment status email for each order, stating whether it is held, pulled, intercepted or already delivered, with times.
6. Send evidence for genuine orders. For orders you believe are real, attach what shows the payer and the recipient are the same person. Klarna decides whether the order proceeds.
7. Close out and log the outcome. Record what Klarna decided for each order and whether any Claim was later reclaimed.

Evidence that supports a genuine order

Klarna’s question is whether the person paying is the person receiving. Earlier orders from the same customer that were delivered and never disputed are the strongest proof you can offer. Matching billing and shipping details help. So do an email address and phone number with a history in your store, and a reply to your contact from the email address used on past orders. Evidence that only shows the order looks normal is weak, because fraud rings work hard to make orders look normal.

Lead with the strongest point for each order, such as three previous deliveries to the same address. Keep each order’s evidence separate so Klarna can rule on them one at a time. Leave the unclear orders held and say so in the reply instead of padding the case.

What a strong reply to Klarna contains

A good reply is short and factual. It confirms the request, lists each flagged order with its status and the time it was held, and states which orders will not ship. For the genuine ones it attaches the evidence. It names the control you added, such as a manual check on first orders of high-resale items. It does not argue that Klarna was wrong to flag, and it does not blame the warehouse, the customer or Klarna’s tools. The stop request page points merchants to Merchant Support inside the Merchant Portal for anything beyond the email reply. If a stopped order later turns into a customer dispute, our guide to building Klarna dispute evidence covers the portal response.

Telling the Customer

The customer message is where well-meaning merchants make things worse. Klarna’s cooperation conditions say the merchant shall notify the customer of any stop request, using the contact details Klarna approved at the time of order. The pending orders guide tells US and UK merchants to let the customer know the order is in progress and the shipment won’t occur immediately. Neither document asks you to mention fraud, and Klarna itself stays silent toward the shopper.

Send the notice to the email or phone number Klarna approved, not to a new address the buyer gives you afterward. A fraudster who changes the contact details after checkout is showing you exactly the pattern Klarna flagged.

Messages for each outcome

• While the order is held. Tell the customer the order is being processed and will not ship right away, and that you will update them. Leave out the word fraud.
• When Klarna clears the order. Release it, ship it and send a plain dispatch notice with tracking.
• When Klarna will not let the order proceed. Cancel it, confirm the cancellation to the approved contact, and make sure any refund owed is processed.

Why the wording matters for disputes

A genuine buyer told their order was “flagged for fraud” feels accused and is more likely to open a dispute. A fraudster told the same thing moves on to another store. Neutral wording protects you in both cases. If disputes on your account are climbing for other reasons, our piece on the Klarna dispute rate limit explains the threshold Klarna watches.

Regional Rules on Held Orders

A stop request does not suspend consumer law. While Klarna reviews an order, your delivery promise to a genuine customer keeps running. Each major market sets its own default delivery deadline and its own remedy when you miss it.

United States

Under 16 CFR 435.2(a)(1)(ii), a seller that states no shipping time must ship within thirty (30) days of receiving a properly completed order. If you cannot meet your stated time, section 435.2(b)(1) requires you to offer the buyer the choice of consenting to the delay or cancelling, and to give a definite revised shipping date. Section 435.2(c)(4) requires a prompt refund once you decide not to ship. A Klarna review that wraps up inside 24 hours rarely tests these limits, but an order left in limbo for weeks does.

European Union

Article 18 of Directive 2011/83/EU requires delivery without undue delay and not later than 30 days from the conclusion of the contract, unless the parties agreed otherwise. If you miss it, the consumer calls on you to deliver within an additional period, and can then terminate and must be reimbursed without undue delay. On the payments side, the Payment Services Directive, Directive (EU) 2015/2366 of 25 November 2015, sets the framework Klarna operates under in the EU, including strong customer authentication as defined in Article 4(30). Klarna’s fraud review sits on top of those requirements and does not replace your own delivery obligations.

United Kingdom

Section 28 of the Consumer Rights Act 2015 sets the same 30-day default for goods. If you miss it, the consumer can set a reasonable new deadline and, if that passes too, end the contract and be repaid all payments without undue delay. UK merchants can also use Klarna’s pending order feature, where Klarna says most reviews take 4 to 8 business hours.

Australia and other markets

Klarna’s terms differ by market, and the address that once held the Australian General Terms now points to the international version. Pull the signed agreement and any market addendum for each country you sell into. Where you trade across several Klarna markets, store all of them in one place so the person handling a stop request knows which version binds that order. If you are unsure whether a market is open to you at all, see our note on Klarna prohibited jurisdictions.

First Request vs Repeat Requests

Klarna’s published terms set no warning tier for stop requests. The first request carries the same obligation as the tenth. What changes with repetition is the record Klarna holds on you.

A single order shipped by mistake usually ends with a repayment under Section 4.1. A pattern of shipping after requests looks like an unwillingness to assist under Section 3.6, and a failure to answer Klarna’s information requests can be treated as a material breach under Section 9. Section 10.1(a) lets either party end the agreement immediately for a material breach left uncured for ten (10) days after notice. Section 11.2 lets Klarna, after giving notice and reasons, adjust your settlement schedule or retain payments in cases that include breach and fraud. Our guide to a terminated Klarna merchant agreement covers what happens next, and the article on releasing Klarna holdbacks covers the money.

When genuine orders keep getting flagged

Repeated flags on real customers point to something in your order flow that resembles fraud. Common causes are a checkout that lets shoppers edit the shipping address after authorization, promotions that push first-time buyers toward high-value bundles, or a traffic source with poor quality. Your outcome log tells you which. Bring that log to Klarna Merchant Support with the specific changes you made. Marketing changes that push basket sizes up also need to stay within Klarna’s marketing and surcharge rules.

Building a Routine That Prevents Missed Holds

Aim for a hold that completes within an hour of the request on any day of the year, including a Saturday in the middle of a sale with the usual person on vacation. Three controls prevent a missed request. The request must be seen, the warehouse must act, and your own screening must catch the worst orders before Klarna needs to.

Make sure the request is seen

• Route Klarna emails and Merchant Portal notifications to a shared inbox that at least two people watch.
• Forward stop request emails to a phone alert outside business hours.
• Name one owner and one backup for stop requests, with a written weekend and holiday rota.

Make sure the warehouse can act

• Agree an urgent channel with your fulfillment partner, such as a dedicated chat thread or phone line, used only for holds.
• Set a target for the warehouse to confirm a hold, such as 30 minutes during operating hours.
• Build a hold flag into the order system that blocks label printing until it is cleared.
• Run a drill each quarter with a test order and time the gap from request to confirmed hold.

Put the urgent hold process into your contract with any third-party warehouse. Cover the channel, the confirmation time, the hours it applies to, and who pays when a parcel ships after a hold request. A warehouse that signed those terms treats a hold as a priority. One that did not treats it as another email.

Catch fraud before Klarna does

Add your own screening for high-resale products and hold first orders above a value you set for your risk level. For digital goods, add a manual check before release on large or unusual orders. When new-customer volume jumps, look for clusters before you ship the next batch. Review the outcome log monthly and tighten the rules wherever the same product, channel or pattern keeps drawing requests.

A worked example

An electronics store runs a weekend headphone sale. On Saturday afternoon, Klarna sends stop requests on six orders. The emails go to the founder, who is at a trade show, and the partner warehouse ships every afternoon. When the founder reads the emails on Sunday evening, four of the six have shipped and no reply has gone to Klarna.

Two of the four were fraudulent, and Klarna reclaims both Claims. The store then moves Klarna mail to a shared inbox with phone alerts, names a weekend owner, agrees a hold channel with the warehouse, and holds first orders above its own value threshold for review. A month later, the next request is held in 40 minutes and answered the same afternoon.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why did Klarna tell me to stop shipping an order?

Klarna sends a stop request when it deems an order high risk, including suspected fraud. It does not have to show you its evidence first. Hold the order, reply to Klarna’s email with the shipment status, and send evidence if you believe the customer is genuine.

How long do I have to respond to a Klarna stop request?

You must answer Klarna’s email about the shipment status within 24 hours, and the hold itself starts immediately. Klarna’s cooperation conditions say you follow the instruction immediately upon receipt. Do not use the 24 hours as time to decide whether to ship.

What happens if I ship an order after Klarna says stop?

Klarna can require you to repay the Claim under Section 4.1 of its General Terms if it deems the order fraudulent. You lose the goods and the payment. Repeated shipments after requests can also feed breach and termination provisions.

Should I tell the customer their Klarna order is on hold?

Yes, but without mentioning fraud. Klarna’s cooperation conditions say the merchant notifies the customer of a stop request at the contact details Klarna approved. Tell them the order is being processed and will not ship immediately.

How long does a Klarna pending order review take?

Klarna says the review usually takes 4 to 8 business hours and could last up to 24 hours. The feature is only available to US and UK merchants. Do not ship until the status changes.

Can I ship an order Klarna rejected if I trust the customer?

Under the pending order feature, you can accept a rejected order by capturing it within 4 hours of Klarna’s notification. Klarna says you then take over any fraud risk on that order. Do it only when your own evidence is strong.

Get Help With a Klarna Fraud Instruction

Most stop requests can be handled with the procedure above. When genuine orders keep getting flagged, or Klarna has started reclaiming Claims and holding settlements, a fraud-pattern review with order-level evidence is the next step. We map your flagged orders against their outcomes, find what in your order flow resembles fraud, build the evidence for genuine customers, and set up a hold process your warehouse can run on a Sunday.

Start with our Klarna merchant reserve and funds dispute service, or book a consultation to have your stop requests reviewed. Merchants dealing with held funds on more than one payment provider can find every related service on our disbursement and funds release hub.

Sources

1. Klarna Merchant Support: What is a Stop request
2. Klarna Docs: Cooperation agreement complementary conditions
3. Klarna: Merchants General Terms and Conditions, Version 24.11
4. Klarna Docs: Pending orders
5. eCFR: 16 CFR Part 435, Mail, Internet, or Telephone Order Merchandise
6. EUR-Lex: Directive 2011/83/EU on consumer rights
7. EUR-Lex: Directive (EU) 2015/2366 on payment services
8. legislation.gov.uk: Consumer Rights Act 2015, section 28