For the life of me I cannot understand anyone would use PayPal. I'd rather trust the postal system with an envelope of money. I have yet to see an area where there aren't better options.
At the moment I use paypal when my bank rejects a credit card transaction due to fraud risk. For example this happened yesterday when I tried to make a payment to a (very reputable) educational institution for an application fee. This is by no means a high risk transaction. In fact I would go so far as to say the payment could never in a million, billion, Brazillian years be fraud, but it was rejected.
But they take paypal also, so no bother. Do the transaction on paypal.
This kind of thing happens maybe once every couple of months for me, and is why I keep paypal around.
Edit to add: I think some UK banks are much more trigger-happy than the global average when it comes to flagging transactions as possible fraud. I once had to pay my tax bill (to the UK government) by paypal because the debit card transaction was declined.
> I think some UK banks are much more trigger-happy than the global average
For a good year, Barclays would ask me if my monthly Oyster purchase, for the same cost, at the same station, on roughly the same day of the month, was actually me doing it. Natwest, similarly, have blocked my "early September, about £1200, to Apple" payment for 5 years in a row now. It's infuriating.
Yeah. It's completely nuts. Especially when you consider how little of the actual fraud they seem to manage to stop. It's like someone needs to go in there and give them a stats 101 talk about type I and type II errors, because they somehow manage to defy all the rules of logic and have extremely high rates of both.
The real travesty is that the credit card companies have had over 25 years to standardize a secure payment system and get it into browsers, yet have still failed to do so which is why we have fraud detection heuristics and their associated false positives. SET was launched in 1996, for crying out loud:
Your own link mentions the technology(3D secure), but all cards issued in the EU have mandatory 2FA for online payments in the form of 3D Secure. I usually have to verify in an app. This results in very little fraud.
Additionally there's the Payment Requests API from W3C which is compatible with Apple Pay and Google Pay.
I've had payments rejected when Revolut thought the payment was fraudulent, but I just get a notification in the app asking if it was me. If I click yes, I just do the payment again and it goes through.
Had it happen recently in the US when paying for a hotel room. They immediately froze the card when it was swiped through the machine by hotel staff. Clicked yes in the app, and it went through.
Paypal is useful, because it transfers money instantly. Sending money in an envelope isn't an option when you want something instantly. As a buyer, it also offers a form of protection from fraudulent sellers, which you also don't have with the postal service.
I can do that with other services too without risking PayPal though. If it is national transfers I can both use a national payment app or even a bank transfer - both instant transfer.
PayPal might give some protection but it also freezes some accounts and keep the money. No other service I have heard of have as bad a reputation.
10-15 years ago (when I started using paypal) most Europeans didn't have a credit card and most US-based services (and things like Ebay and Dealextreme) didn't accept anything but credit cards and paypal. And this sometimes is still the case.
Credit card is a rarity in Europe, because what we call a "credit card" is actually a debit card. Credit card are available at a premium, and while they offer some other advantages, few people use those. Visiting the US is actually one of the compelling reasons to get one.
In France (and I'm going to guess similar rules exist in other EU countries), businesses are required to accept at least 2 different payment options. They choose which 2, for example Apple Store accepts cards or ... cash. Buying a Mac with cash is a funny albeit slightly stressful experience.
To clarify, what I as a Dutch person would define:
- Debit card: payment is immediately subtracted from the bank account. "Normal". No charge backs. Accepted almost everywhere. No or nearly no charge per transaction (for the user). Return debit possible (when returning an item)
- Credit card: payments either summed as a loan or monthly charged from the bank account. Charge backs possible. Costs additional money each year, and some transactions may also cost 10 or 15 cents. Not accepted everywhere, mostly in diners or super markets - not in most retail stores. Most people don't have a credit card and/or don't use it regularly.
I see that 50% of people in Belgium have credit cards and I suspect it's because bank cards until very recently used to be almost only usable in Belgium, and not for online purchase (except at some Belgian stores). So you would need a credit card for a "normal" modern online life.
Not sure if it's still true but it also used to be the case in Canada while I lived there a decade ago or so.
Bank cards today seem to be double more and more as Mastercard/VISA debit cards and I think the amount of people bearing credit cards might decrease in the future. At least that's what has been happening with a few people around me.
France is listed at 40% and there are no issuers of credit cards for the general population in France across the main banks. I do not know where they took the data from, but this is far from being the reality. Idem for Poland and Germany.
That statistic is about possession though, the parent comment is talking about usage. I'm in the one-third of my country that has a credit card, but I use it maybe five times a year, while I use my debit card daily.
My reason for getting a credit card as soon as possible when I moved to Germany, was being able to switch the country of residence of some of my services to Germany, because they only accepted a local credit card as proof of residence here.
Google was the main culprit in this regard.
Mind you, the credit card itself is a serious joke - it's designed to be useless as far as I'm concerned. You cannot change the billing date, the app doesn't even show you the cutoff date. You cannot change the pin at all - if you request a new pin, they send you a new card.
The only good way I've found to use the card is through Paypal, ironically. At least this way I can see, down to the minute, what I spent and where, which the bank is unable or unwilling to show me.
There is no credit on the cards you get in the EU, except if you ask for some. By default there is no.
A credit card is, well, a credit with rates etc. You may pay a part and the rest runs as a credit. You have a specific contact for that. Also a credit card can be issues without a backing bank account. Our cards always (in practical sense) are backed by an account.
This is not how the cards work in the EU. You have delayed debit but no credit (formally - in practice you spend the money of the bank obviously, but you have to pay in full after 30-45 days).
American Express is a system that is used by companies (for various reasons) and this IS a credit card, but people use it for business related reasons and its delivery is triggered by the company.
I live in Spain and I absolutely have a real credit card. The interest rate is awful(18%), but as long as I make a minimum payment each month, it's up to me when I pay it off.
It depends on what you mean by "use PayPal". To give out my debit card details as infrequently as possible, if a business supports paying with paypal I'll use them as the payment provider. I don't store any money with them though.
You usually don't need a paypal account for that though.
Having said that, it can bite you in different way. Paypal keep an association of last email used in a transaction with a card number.
For example, I had paid for a vps hosting using paypal payment (without a patpal account) with one card, using my email address in the billing details. Later one we bought something for my partner with the same card, but using her email address in the billing details.
Subsequent payments notifications for my vps hosting were sent to her email address.
PayPal is excellent for sending money (buying) for the same reason it is terrible for receiving money (selling).
Essentially, the buyer is always right, and so, as a buyer, it is very easy to get your money back in case of a problem. The seller is the one who gets all the fees, and needs to justify himself if there is a dispute. Sellers offer PayPal because even though it is really bad for them, it gets them customers.
I use PayPal for when I'm buying stuff from websites that I use very infrequently. I "trust" (in the lightest possible sense) PayPal more than a random website with my card details. Making it go through PayPal seems safer?
But they take paypal also, so no bother. Do the transaction on paypal.
This kind of thing happens maybe once every couple of months for me, and is why I keep paypal around.
Edit to add: I think some UK banks are much more trigger-happy than the global average when it comes to flagging transactions as possible fraud. I once had to pay my tax bill (to the UK government) by paypal because the debit card transaction was declined.