Indeed, this is the last hurrah for PayPal. US instant payments go live early next year. They’re trying to squeeze what’s left before they’re obsolete.
We've had this in Australia for a while now under the name "NPP" (New Payment Platform) more commonly referred to by folks as "PayID" or "Osko", and I have to say since it's been introduced I've never used PayPal to buy or receive payment for stuff in Australia.
PayPal is an inferior experience in just about every way; it's not instantly in my bank account (it takes days), there's huge fees, and its an unnecessary third party that adds no real value.
Sadly I don't think there is anything similar here in Europe that would give the same level of consumer protection though. Also convincing sellers to accept a new payment method seems a big effort that requires some time. Hopefully I'm wrong.
Something somewhat similar is Blik in Poland. Free and instant transactions: user to user, online, ATM, ground terminals. Primarily based on short-term one-time codes generated in your banking app.
In 2021 alone, it had 21.5M active users and it facilitated 758M transactions. Polish National Bank (Polish counterpart of the Fed) reported that in 2019, online transactions using Blik have surpassed in volume online payments using credit cards.
https://www.frbservices.org/financial-services/fednow/about....
Indeed, this is the last hurrah for PayPal. US instant payments go live early next year. They’re trying to squeeze what’s left before they’re obsolete.