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coredev_today at 6:33 PM4 repliesview on HN

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.


Replies

xp84today at 6:42 PM

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.

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nozzlegeartoday at 6:41 PM

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.

muvlontoday at 6:42 PM

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.

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rglovertoday at 6:40 PM

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

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