[coredev_]

Why, what is the play here? I know PayPal is used extensively in some countries (like Brazil?) but in most countries there are other/local services that have substantial market share and I do not think that PayPal can compete.

[xp84]

Don't forget Venmo - PayPal smartly gobbled that up many, many years ago, and it has a great amount of mindshare (though I don't know how profitable it is). Zelle popped up later and somehow has plenty of users, but unlike Venmo, Zelle is a steaming pile of sh*t of user experience, due to it being a consortium of all the famously-tech-backwards big banks, which stood it up out of fear and jealousy that those "Internet" guys might find a way to disintermediate them somehow.

[onlypassingthru]

Zelle was built to preempt FedNow. The banks saw what was coming and wanted to own instant payments.

https://www.frbservices.org/financial-services/fednow/about....

[toast0]

> Zelle popped up later and somehow has plenty of users,

At least for me, Zelle is something I can do in my bank app, so I don't need to work with anything I wasn't already using.

It feels a lot easier to use than Venmo, but I dunno. It's one of like 7 options I have to transfer in the bank app.

[kelvinjps10]

what's the problem with zelle? it works in my bank app, it's fast, no fees, it's really easy to use

[xp84]

1. Bank apps are terrible, slow, and poorly organized, because banks. They suck at software. Venmo and Cashapp are good at software.

2. (Insert healthy amount of distrust of anything the banks all want, because there's zero chance it's in consumers' best interest)

3. We don't control anything, Zelle does. I have 5 bank accounts (multiple banks). I have one cell phone number, and of COURSE Zelle, like the banks that run it, insists on using cell phone numbers as basically their primary key and only identifier. When someone pays me by putting in my number, where will the money go? F--k if I know!

[nozzlegear]

If I'm buying something from a website and they don't offer Apple Pay, I'll opt for PayPal instead since I already have my credit/debit cards saved there and don't want to hand over numbers to a random website. Also, when I used to do more freelancing, all of my clients preferred to be invoiced and pay through PayPal (who skimmed a decent chunk of change off the top).

Not sure if either of those reasons would be what Stripe wants here, but just my two cents. I'm American fwiw.

[muvlon]

Interesting that you'd mention Brazil. I consider it one of the very few examples of countries successfully replacing PayPal with a publicly owned service. Pix is ubiquitous in Brazil and has been for years. It has not only displaced PayPal but also cash and (in large parts) Visa/MasterCard, even in the face of US tariff threats.

[usrnm]

It's actually pretty common for local payment systems to exist, it's not just Brazil. I've seen such systems in Europe, Asia, Africa and I'm sure they exist in other places I've never been to

[muvlon]

Oh they exist all over the place. Pix is just unique in its success. It has only been around for ~5 years and it's completely taken over the country.

[rglover]

Consolidation (move toward making Stripe the only game in town).

[coredev_]

PayPal seems to me like something from the past that no one uses. But sure, they have a market and a profit, but a future?

Will Stripe move customers from PayPal to Stripe or will they fix PayPal?