[foldor]

PayPal allows people who don't have a credit card to make purchases online. Many people in European countries don't have a credit card for example. Accepting PayPal is an easy alternative to supporting all of the different payment methods that you might need to meet certain regions expectations.

[Mvandenbergh]

Amazon accepts debit cards and other payment methods in those countries though. For a company of Amazon's scale, supporting different payment methods across European borders is not the challenge that it would be for a small business.

[VLM]

The existing marketplace solution for that is prepaid credit cards, essentially gift certs that can be redeemed by being run as a credit card. Teens use them to shop online, or at least my kids do.

There is also limited liability with prepaid CCs, no matter what happens you can't be out more than the value of the CC, but you can get into considerable financial trouble with paypal WRT overdrafts and overdraft fees and bounced check fees ... its just not worth it unless you're well disciplined.

[icebraining]

Not sure how widespread it is, but here in Portugal banks offer a service that allows you to create virtual CCs tied to your bank account. You just set a limit (in €) and it returns all the CC info needed to make a payment.

[SEJeff]

Bank of America has the exact same thing.

https://www.bankofamerica.com/privacy/accounts-cards/shopsaf...

[ericcope]

do any other banks have this?

[dkarapetyan]

Chase.

[SEJeff]

Really? Where? I've been a chase customer since they bought BankOne in ~2006 and haven't seen this.

[dkarapetyan]

Sign in to the online portal. If you have a credit card with them you can generate virtual ones tied to that same card.