Diligence told them they’re buying a almost dead payment processor with ancient tech. Customer lists are worth something but not that much.
enos_feedler · 2026-08-28 02:27:34 UTC
Elon bought a dead social network and look at him go! But seriously, I log into paypal once a month to pay my landlord. I am a MAU. That is crazy. It’s more then I can say for ABNB. Maybe they should buy Paypal. Save on those transaction fees.
darth_avocado · 2026-08-28 03:21:50 UTC
The social network is more dead than when he bought it. Wouldn’t need the an acquisition first by an ai company and then a space company to hide its worth.
SllX · 2026-08-28 03:28:32 UTC
I wish Twitter had been dead when Elon bought it, but no, Twitter was far from dead. X actually has fewer MAU as far as I can tell[1], and I wouldn’t call it dead either.
[1]: Seriously though, I can’t find good data I trust on this so correct me if you’ve got a good source saying otherwise, or even if someone has something substantiating this better I would take that too.
pjc50 · 2026-08-28 08:04:17 UTC
Why can't you pay the landlord by standing order?
sho_hn · 2026-08-28 03:18:01 UTC
Curious to hear from someone who watches this space. What makes them dead?
It's still the only consistently supported thing I encounter online.
I'm aware things like Wero are poised to shake things up, but still have no real idea about timeline and impact.
nostrebored · 2026-08-28 04:13:19 UTC
Maybe we’re doing different things or in different regions, but I rarely see pay with PayPal now.
anonzzzies · 2026-08-28 04:20:09 UTC
Luckily I haven't for years now. But might indeed be different regions.
qingcharles · 2026-08-28 04:30:43 UTC
I see it absolutely everywhere still. We all exist in our own bubbles.
mjrbrennan · 2026-08-28 05:12:51 UTC
Yes it's basically every website in Australia you can pay via PayPal now. I use it less and less since Apple Pay is available pretty much everywhere, but it can still be handy now and then.
bokkies · 2026-08-28 06:21:23 UTC
Popular in South Africa also and remains one of the very few credit card processors where you can bill in USD and remit in ZAR (no Stripe in SA)
distances · 2026-08-28 06:12:06 UTC
I see it all the time in Europe. Many German online shops have Paypal as the default payment method and may even process card payments through Paypal.
Also, it's often the way people transfer money between each other.
ifwinterco · 2026-08-28 07:26:47 UTC
Still see it sometimes in the UK, but if it's there often there's an extra fee to use paypal instead of card, so I doubt many people use it.
Card number is standard, with an increasing amount of places supporting Apple Pay (thankfully)
LoganDark · 2026-08-28 04:18:24 UTC
The other consistently supported thing is card numbers. I generate virtual card numbers for every merchant, no need for some suspicious interloper. For non-recurring or one-off transactions -- new virtual card for each purchase.
OrangeDelonge · 2026-08-28 04:29:19 UTC
Are you in Germany by chance?
sho_hn · 2026-08-28 07:02:17 UTC
Yep.
AdamN · 2026-08-28 07:40:23 UTC
It is funny :-)
Moving to Germany from the US was like entering a timewarp. PayPal is still real??? People use it??
I get it now but it's a pretty big miss that GiroCard couldn't figure out how to displace them after all this time.
ricardobayes · 2026-08-28 08:01:16 UTC
Sometimes it's the other way around. Lockers for packages were first introduced in Germany (Packstation) then they were rolled out in the US almost a decade later.
Not having a lot of credit cards and the associated rewards is actually healthy. Research has shown lower social classes "pay" for the rewards due to paying the higher transaction fees. There was actually a relevant thread here a few days ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49432201 (How credit card rewards became a $9.2B wealth transfer)
sho_hn · 2026-08-28 08:12:04 UTC
:-)
Well, I used to live and work in South Korea for many years, so both DE and the US are about equally oldschool in my book :)
fsckboy · 2026-08-28 05:21:14 UTC
>What makes them dead? It's still the only consistently supported thing I encounter online.
online is dead too, no app uses paypal, and plenty of online merchants take credit cards more than paypal; they even offer their own credit cards.
paypal hasn't innovated at all in over a decade, and people are scared of the way it will hang on to your money with little recourse.
chirau · 2026-08-28 05:45:59 UTC
"No app uses PayPal"
You have already lost your plot with that claim. Just because you don't use it doesn't mean it is not widespread.
cricalix · 2026-08-28 05:49:04 UTC
PayPal is, unfortunately, not dead. It's used by RMV in Germany for a start - only way to pay for a bus ticket in the app/website. No credit or debit card, straight up PayPal account.
sho_hn · 2026-08-28 06:27:57 UTC
> online is dead too, no app uses paypal
PayPal is the payment method I use for Google Pay, so pretty much everything goes through it.
(I don't have a credit card, which is common where I live.)
fsuts · 2026-08-28 06:08:09 UTC
PayPal originally took off as it was convenient and fast, saving you from filling in card details each time and it also allowed sending payments for private transactions using only an email address
Since then Apple Pay/Google pay/browser wallets have taken a big chunk of its fast checkout advantage
And mobile banking apps/instant transfer have taken out chunks of the private transactions, and more so as consumer to consumer transactions often had the parties using PayPal gift mode to avoid fees but that then had zero protection.
The 2020’s is much more crowded than 1990’s and 2020’s decades
Also it was its partnership with eBay that made it dominant and eBay no longer promote PayPal as preferred payment method.
slv77 · 2026-08-28 11:14:58 UTC
PayPal also allowed internet payments without requiring handing over credit card details to a third party. Handing your credit card number to every two-but e-commerce site pretty much guaranteed your card would be compromised. Today PCI requirements and tokenization reduce the risks substantially and Apple Pay and Google Pay add another layer of protection.
That estimates PayPal still has 40%+ online payment market share.
I'm assuming a lot of that is long-tail 'I put a PayPal link on my store in 2005' stuff, but I imagine those add up.
And they're also probably a sticky customer base, in the sense that anyone still using PayPal as primary today doesn't like changing things, which makes acquiring those customers worth it.
LoganDark · 2026-08-28 04:17:45 UTC
I honestly wish they could've succeeded because PayPal is one of the banes of my existence. They're one of those faceless corporations that accuse everyone of money laundering in order to steal their shit.
anonzzzies · 2026-08-28 04:24:21 UTC
They held and stole quite a bit of money from my company when it was small 'for fraud'; it was a very hard time, and of course there was no fraud. It was a long time ago and I don't get angry anymore, but it was a nightmare and nothing you can do. Since then I moved to local processing, issuing, acquiring; I can thank Paypal for all of that. Hope they die a miserable death, but I guess 50B$ says at least the managers will drive their lambo's/yachts around no matter what happens unfortunately.
inigyou · 2026-08-28 04:32:48 UTC
Of course you can do something. You can sue PayPal.
anonzzzies · 2026-08-28 05:05:23 UTC
Suing over borders. Did I mention small company? What would it cost me, in 2007, to sue a US company from my country in europe? With what chance of winning?
inigyou · 2026-08-28 05:24:06 UTC
They're actually a European company, or else they can't operate there. The European company is probably a subsidiary of an American one.
anonzzzies · 2026-08-28 08:45:33 UTC
Still not in my own country; I see they were in the UK back then; suing over borders inside the EU is still expensive and pretty much advised against unless it's a lot of money. It was for us, but not compared to this effort; anyway ; it was advised against back then. Maybe now it's easier.
LoganDark · 2026-08-28 06:39:05 UTC
Especially after they already stole all your money.
kevin_thibedeau · 2026-08-28 06:46:51 UTC
You sue the European subsidiary which will be a regulated bank, unlike US PayPal.
KaiserPro · 2026-08-28 07:36:10 UTC
and how much would that cost vs the chance of it working?
general1465 · 2026-08-28 07:58:35 UTC
It would be small claims court and they are being sued so much, that they don't even bother to show up in trials (courts are expensive goes both ways), so it is default win usually.
csomar · 2026-08-28 07:43:43 UTC
I am not sure about the year 2007, but in 2026, they need to be under your monetary authority somehow. That's why most crypto exchanges do not offer service in Europe. Your monetary authority might have a form or an email for complaint and depending on how pro-active they are, they can make the other counter-party very proactive.
chneu · 2026-08-28 06:57:12 UTC
Paypal stole over $10k from a Haitian charity drive we did. They froze the account and all the donations, then refused to refund people and offered "Donate to our charity instead" as an option.
It was bonkers.
LoganDark · 2026-08-28 07:35:02 UTC
You were collecting money for charity, and you're upset that PayPal... offered to donate the money to charity? Was it mixed with other funds?
inigyou · 2026-08-28 04:32:11 UTC
PayPal is still the default processor in so many places. That's got to be worth something. Every other time I buy something online, PayPal is the default option.
SXX · 2026-08-28 05:08:22 UTC
What country are you living in?
AlotOfReading · 2026-08-28 05:15:49 UTC
I see it everywhere in the US.
meerita · 2026-08-28 06:04:31 UTC
Most of the banks around the world are still running on old tech. Not so long ago I remember one was still using Cobol.
cbdumas · 2026-08-28 06:05:17 UTC
Can folks responding to this comment claiming that they see PayPal a lot provide some details? Country, industry, sector, something. I'm in the US and I basically never see it on e commerce checkout flows any more (and good riddance IMO).
kevin_thibedeau · 2026-08-28 06:43:19 UTC
It is still common on small e-commerce sites. The ones at high risk of being hacked where you don't want them to have your card details.
domh · 2026-08-28 07:16:05 UTC
Yeah this is my primary use case for using PayPal. I use it on e-commerce sites for first purchase or if it's unlikely I'm going to buy anything from the same site again.
jen729w · 2026-08-28 07:10:43 UTC
I run an online store selling e-stuff. I offer Stripe by default, and a 'use PayPal' link on the side.
It accounts for about 20% of my sales. I was about to write 'overwhelmingly Europeans' and I thought I better check. Nope.
Row Labels Count of Country
---------- ----------------
United States 54
Germany 12
Australia 10
United Kingdom 7
Netherlands 7
csomar · 2026-08-28 07:39:42 UTC
I don't see it as much as before but recently I had issues with paying z.ai with my card and the only payment alternative they have is PayPal. PayPal now requires an account with a verified phone number just to process your payment, so it's strictly a no-go for me.
I am guessing the millions of people they have on-boarded in the last decades are what makes the business worth something.
Steve44 · 2026-08-28 07:43:55 UTC
I'm in the UK and I use it a few times a month.
Generally I would use it on smaller / unfamiliar websites; I may be more hesitant about entering my credit card numbers but also it's quicker and easier as I can do it without getting my card out of my bag.
I also use it exclusively for eBay purchases.
pasc1878 · 2026-08-28 09:03:51 UTC
Agreed but only if I can't use Apple/Google card.
So my usage is way down.
herbst · 2026-08-28 07:53:59 UTC
In European online shopping it's very common for everything thats not ment for only one country.
Within Switzerland there is zero need for PayPal do you don't see it as much, but if you ship to Germany or Italy things start to get more complicated.
Stripe is tiny compared to Paypal, and the dodgy Stripe CEO was trying to do some wildly creative financing and work the social media memes in an effort to pull this transaction off. Wall St. basically thought it was stupid and wouldn't support it. Glad he finally gave up -- he certainly got his money's worth of free publicity out of it.
jey · 2026-08-28 03:28:50 UTC
None of this makes sense or is supported by the facts. Stripe is reportedly valued at $159B, PayPal's market cap is currently $52.59B, and your claims about memes and Wall St are asserted without any citations or facts.
jmtulloss · 2026-08-28 04:32:23 UTC
[disclaimer: I used to work at stripe]
I agree with you in principle but I don't think that market cap is the right metric. Market cap captures a lot of assumptions around product mix and growth rates that have been in Stripe's favor for a long time.
The most apples-to-apples comparison is just looking at payments volume and ignoring all their other products. In that case, Stripe just recently overtook PayPal! PayPal is enormous! But Stripe has that compounding growth on its side and GP's argument has become outdated in a short amount of time.
This is ignoring the bit about pc which I just disagree with.
KaiserPro · 2026-08-28 07:40:23 UTC
> Stripe is reportedly valued at $159B
But that value is not tested or backed by the wider market.
Market cap of paypal is.
Also having just spaffed "$8bn" on openrouter, I would be surprised that they have enough resources to get the ~$50bn to buy paypal. Much less the work it would take to integrate a much larger company in to the "stripe" way
Synthetic7346 · 2026-08-28 15:01:33 UTC
They also bought bridge last year, and Clerky just now
helsinkiandrew · 2026-08-28 05:14:38 UTC
Have you conflated the Ryan Coen/GameStop bid for EBay with the Stripe/payPal one? Your points match that perfectly
yeah my head kind of spun seeing pc referred to as "work[ing] social media memes"
ocd · 2026-08-28 03:25:26 UTC
I've been wondering about this since it came up in my newsreader that they wanted to acquire PayPal. Seemed like odd timing to me given PayPal has been questionable but necessary in a lot of cases for online businesses in international payments.
In Canada, we use Interac for more ordinary payments between ourselves, and the usual credit cards through card processors like Moneris or bank provided services in physical stores. I can imagine fewer uses for PayPal as time goes on, especially with the accelerated change driven by geopolitics. Visa and Mastercard may be at risk internationally for other countries seeking to keep payment processing entirely in their own yard.
This matter in particular made me wonder how things will go for Stripe going forward with these policy changes that may impact credit cards.
I'd love to delete my PayPal account and never log in again, but the use case for me right now is mostly that companies (outside Canada, and outside NA in most cases) usually only accept payment with PayPal.
aghuang · 2026-08-28 05:02:51 UTC
Thought this would happen and would work out. Must have been a disagreement on more than just the price.
Only Stripe knows.
diogenescynic · 2026-08-28 05:25:36 UTC
PayPal is dying and not that slowly. It's being replaced by Stripe, Adyen, Checkout.com, Apple Pay, Google Pay... etc. margins continue to decrease with no real moat to rising competition. Eventually it will just be Venmo and Braintree left and PayPal will be a company like Western Union that people used to need, but now is mostly used by scammers... They completely squandered their spin off from eBay and acquired terrible companies along the way that didn't pan out really even one time. I wouldn't pay $25B for them. You're buying a depreciating asset.
93po · 2026-08-28 05:45:43 UTC
Thank God because Paypal has routinely been one of the shittiest internet companies to ever exist
LoganDark · 2026-08-28 07:17:55 UTC
Venmo is owned by PayPal
tyre · 2026-08-28 05:30:31 UTC
Makes sense:
> The takeover interest has helped it recover, with PayPal shares jumping more than 40% this quarter to give the company a market value of about $52.6 billion.
Seems like they tried to buy a struggling company and leaks of the talks made it too expensive.
johnwheeler · 2026-08-28 07:44:08 UTC
It's not a struggling company. I run an e-commerce website. I give people the option to use either Stripe or PayPal. I would say it's a 50 50 split. The company is making $5 billion in profit a year. What's wrong with people?
shevy-java · 2026-08-28 07:57:52 UTC
This is kind of at odds with other reports.
weiran · 2026-08-28 08:02:51 UTC
> What’s wrong with people?
Confirmation bias.
altmanaltman · 2026-08-28 08:03:37 UTC
Yeah the "struggling company" is a bit too harsh of a statement. What they likely were talking about was the stock price. It was getting hit pretty hard and the Stripe deal talks saw confidence which led to the stock price getting back up and now the market value for the company is actually higher than what Stripe is offering in the deal so it doesn't make sense to sell lower at this point of time.
cubefox · 2026-08-28 10:35:26 UTC
None of that is remotely evidence that "struggling company" is merely "a bit too harsh".
wongarsu · 2026-08-28 10:01:09 UTC
If I have a credit card, as a consumer Stripe and PayPal are about equal. Both let me pay with my card without making an account. Both will lightly nag me to make one, with the difference that Stripe Link is very light-weight and Paypal is a lot more heavy-weight. But in return Paypal allows more payment methods (direct debit from your bank account being a big pull here in Germany) and makes it possible to send money between friends. Also lots of people 30+ (which is the vast majority of the population) have paypal accounts from the "don't give random websites your credit card, give it to this one trustworthy website instead"-era.
If there weren't so many people hating PayPal, I'd expect a straight Stripe/Paypal choice to lean much more towards paypal, not a 50-50 split
cubefox · 2026-08-28 07:53:27 UTC
PayPal is very big in some countries.
acd · 2026-08-28 05:45:14 UTC
There is us fair competition law Sherman anti trust act laws. "is a United States antitrust law which prescribes the rule of free competition among those engaged in commerce and consequently prohibits unfair monopolies"
"pursuit" reminds me of mortal engines. But then I think the book was a comment on capitalism strip mining the earth anyway.
wkoszek · 2026-08-28 06:15:45 UTC
PayPal might still be the sweetheart, but there's no innovation I feel. With eBay having CC support and being able to charge and return a charge back to the card, PayPal now is in a niche. I'm helping a founder recruit. To handle the load of candidates, we give folks applying some $ for doing a small 1hr project, and Claude told me that PayPal may still be universal way of sending a "gift amounts". I often wonder how much work would it be to bring IBAN accounts to the US. The need for Zelle baffles me, and the fact that person A can't send $ to person B via normal bank infrastructure is interesting.
mrdoe · 2026-08-28 06:18:48 UTC
Wait what? How are you then going to send someone money?! If not through the bank? What special USA feature is this?
DarmokTanagra · 2026-08-28 06:26:24 UTC
Its crazy, every time I am in the US and a group needs to split a bill its a absurd debate over which third party payments provider to use.
I've even had people refuse cash because they want me to "venmo" them or whatever stupid app they prefer.
groestl · 2026-08-28 06:40:13 UTC
Isn't "split the bill" something that the restaurant does?
chneu · 2026-08-28 06:55:04 UTC
Yes but a lot of people just use apps. It's weird.
Americans are super weird about dining procedures and expectations. Remember, we tip here. It's weird.
ricardobayes · 2026-08-28 07:53:08 UTC
Most of Europe tips too, and increasingly there is a service charge too (at least in the UK it has become standard now).
master-lincoln · 2026-08-28 10:37:51 UTC
According to this list it doesn't seem like most of Europe tips too
Sometimes. In USA they may require one check for parties of >N (where N can be 6). Some (fancy) places won't split at all. Then consumers juggle apps to square up the deal.
DarmokTanagra · 2026-08-28 06:24:47 UTC
Who considers PayPal a sweetheart?! PayPal is by far one of the most heinous companies I have interacted with on a regular basis.
Outside the US many banks offer simple QR payment options, the direct transfer difficulties US citizens encounter that make services like PayPal and Zelle necessary are entirely self imposed.
chneu · 2026-08-28 06:53:36 UTC
PayPal is Intuit of the payment processor world.
Paypal has actively lobbied for legislation(or lack of) in ways that has hurt American consumers.
jarym · 2026-08-28 07:30:29 UTC
100%. They had a place back when banks barely knew what the internet was.
But I think their time has passed.
AdamN · 2026-08-28 07:33:27 UTC
Agree that nobody considers it a sweetheart but you're wrong on the ex-US issue. Paypal is big in Germany for instance and I literally know nobody who uses Paypal in the US (maybe for eBay stuff??)
pimeys · 2026-08-28 07:59:03 UTC
Probably not very long. Multiple companies, including Amazon, started supporting Wero for payments. And most banks already support it. You scan a QR code or open a link that opens your bank app, show your fingerprint, see the amount and which account and to who, and you approve. Very easy and costs nothing to the seller nor the buyer.
Next year we'll get this in the physical stores...
tetec1 · 2026-08-28 08:50:20 UTC
You’re overestimating their ability to change. I still regularly have to pay in cash in many businesses here in Berlin.
Wero is a great start but I suspect that PayPal will stay around for many more years.
icantevenhold · 2026-08-28 10:24:05 UTC
At the same time you’re underestimating it.
Before covid almost no small businesses would offer card payment; now it’s common.
Sure there are some that are against digital payments and they won’t accept Wero neither, but I would argue the number is very small.
And sure in bars/clubs/nightlife it’s cash only but that also won’t change - it’s for tax reasons.
People don’t like PayPal and only use it for the lack of a better alternative.
EC is widely used and I bet that Wero will be as well.
Source: lived last 15 years in Berlin
sajithdilshan · 2026-08-28 11:39:39 UTC
As a principal I boycott places that only accepts cash in Berlin. There is absolutely no reason for them to accept money only in cash in 2026, except for tax evasion and money laundering
Comments
[1]: Seriously though, I can’t find good data I trust on this so correct me if you’ve got a good source saying otherwise, or even if someone has something substantiating this better I would take that too.
It's still the only consistently supported thing I encounter online.
I'm aware things like Wero are poised to shake things up, but still have no real idea about timeline and impact.
Also, it's often the way people transfer money between each other.
Card number is standard, with an increasing amount of places supporting Apple Pay (thankfully)
Moving to Germany from the US was like entering a timewarp. PayPal is still real??? People use it??
I get it now but it's a pretty big miss that GiroCard couldn't figure out how to displace them after all this time.
Not having a lot of credit cards and the associated rewards is actually healthy. Research has shown lower social classes "pay" for the rewards due to paying the higher transaction fees. There was actually a relevant thread here a few days ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49432201 (How credit card rewards became a $9.2B wealth transfer)
Well, I used to live and work in South Korea for many years, so both DE and the US are about equally oldschool in my book :)
online is dead too, no app uses paypal, and plenty of online merchants take credit cards more than paypal; they even offer their own credit cards.
paypal hasn't innovated at all in over a decade, and people are scared of the way it will hang on to your money with little recourse.
You have already lost your plot with that claim. Just because you don't use it doesn't mean it is not widespread.
PayPal is the payment method I use for Google Pay, so pretty much everything goes through it.
(I don't have a credit card, which is common where I live.)
Since then Apple Pay/Google pay/browser wallets have taken a big chunk of its fast checkout advantage
And mobile banking apps/instant transfer have taken out chunks of the private transactions, and more so as consumer to consumer transactions often had the parties using PayPal gift mode to avoid fees but that then had zero protection.
The 2020’s is much more crowded than 1990’s and 2020’s decades
Also it was its partnership with eBay that made it dominant and eBay no longer promote PayPal as preferred payment method.
That estimates PayPal still has 40%+ online payment market share.
I'm assuming a lot of that is long-tail 'I put a PayPal link on my store in 2005' stuff, but I imagine those add up.
And they're also probably a sticky customer base, in the sense that anyone still using PayPal as primary today doesn't like changing things, which makes acquiring those customers worth it.
It was bonkers.
It accounts for about 20% of my sales. I was about to write 'overwhelmingly Europeans' and I thought I better check. Nope.
I am guessing the millions of people they have on-boarded in the last decades are what makes the business worth something.
Generally I would use it on smaller / unfamiliar websites; I may be more hesitant about entering my credit card numbers but also it's quicker and easier as I can do it without getting my card out of my bag.
I also use it exclusively for eBay purchases.
Within Switzerland there is zero need for PayPal do you don't see it as much, but if you ship to Germany or Italy things start to get more complicated.
1 month ago: Stripe and Advent have made a joint offer to acquire PayPal – sources https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48915953
I agree with you in principle but I don't think that market cap is the right metric. Market cap captures a lot of assumptions around product mix and growth rates that have been in Stripe's favor for a long time.
The most apples-to-apples comparison is just looking at payments volume and ignoring all their other products. In that case, Stripe just recently overtook PayPal! PayPal is enormous! But Stripe has that compounding growth on its side and GP's argument has become outdated in a short amount of time.
This is ignoring the bit about pc which I just disagree with.
But that value is not tested or backed by the wider market.
Market cap of paypal is.
Also having just spaffed "$8bn" on openrouter, I would be surprised that they have enough resources to get the ~$50bn to buy paypal. Much less the work it would take to integrate a much larger company in to the "stripe" way
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ckgp5ll3jd4o?app-referre...
In Canada, we use Interac for more ordinary payments between ourselves, and the usual credit cards through card processors like Moneris or bank provided services in physical stores. I can imagine fewer uses for PayPal as time goes on, especially with the accelerated change driven by geopolitics. Visa and Mastercard may be at risk internationally for other countries seeking to keep payment processing entirely in their own yard.
This matter in particular made me wonder how things will go for Stripe going forward with these policy changes that may impact credit cards.
I'd love to delete my PayPal account and never log in again, but the use case for me right now is mostly that companies (outside Canada, and outside NA in most cases) usually only accept payment with PayPal.
Only Stripe knows.
> The takeover interest has helped it recover, with PayPal shares jumping more than 40% this quarter to give the company a market value of about $52.6 billion.
Seems like they tried to buy a struggling company and leaks of the talks made it too expensive.
Confirmation bias.
If there weren't so many people hating PayPal, I'd expect a straight Stripe/Paypal choice to lean much more towards paypal, not a 50-50 split
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherman_Antitrust_Act
I've even had people refuse cash because they want me to "venmo" them or whatever stupid app they prefer.
Americans are super weird about dining procedures and expectations. Remember, we tip here. It's weird.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tipping_customs_by_cou...
Outside the US many banks offer simple QR payment options, the direct transfer difficulties US citizens encounter that make services like PayPal and Zelle necessary are entirely self imposed.
Paypal has actively lobbied for legislation(or lack of) in ways that has hurt American consumers.
But I think their time has passed.
Next year we'll get this in the physical stores...
Wero is a great start but I suspect that PayPal will stay around for many more years.
Sure there are some that are against digital payments and they won’t accept Wero neither, but I would argue the number is very small. And sure in bars/clubs/nightlife it’s cash only but that also won’t change - it’s for tax reasons.
People don’t like PayPal and only use it for the lack of a better alternative. EC is widely used and I bet that Wero will be as well.
Source: lived last 15 years in Berlin