alt Hacker NewsNah, I hate them with a passion as a merchant but I absolutely love them as a buyer and customer.
There is a reason why after all these years and other solutions they're still everywhere, and it's not because of their great tooling, their low fees or their awesome support for merchant. It's not because of market lock in either, at least here in Europe they're merely a middle man between my credit card or sepa bank account and the merchant. It's because buyers trust it.
Buyers don't trust stripe. Stripe is for the merchant.
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The advantage that PayPal offers me as a buyer is a middleman between the vendor and myself that I control. The vendor does not get any of my card or bank info, and if it’s a subscription I can easily cancel it at any time on the PayPal side without having to go through whatever dark patterns the vendor might have to prevent you unsubscribing.
Nah I thought I liked PayPal as a customer until I found out that they favor large merchants against the consumer. I had a problem with a product and the company was playing games with the warranty. I only had it for 3 months and it was already falling apart. I made a complaint with PP and it was auto denied.
I will never use PP for a large purchase again.
Yeah, any subscription I can push through PayPal, I do so, because I can cancel it directly on their end. I don't need to go through a ten click justification process with the merchant.
> ... because buyers trust it.
I did until October 2022, when PayPal published an update to its Acceptable Use Policy that threatened to fine users $2,500 for promoting "misinformation".
Like they were the arbiters of what is misinformation and worthy of economic penalty. While it was later rescinded, it was beyond the pale. It's proof that something is corrupt and completely out to lunch in their management, and I won't sign up again after deleting my account in protest.
Edit: So apparently they only removed the misinformation clause, and they may still seize $2,500 of your money if they alone decide you are guilty of "...the promotion of hate, violence, racial or other forms of intolerance that is discriminatory or the financial exploitation of a crime...". People are worried about authoritarianism, yet meekly cede such powers to a corporation? It boggles the mind.
As a buyer, I like something that's good for the merchant, because 99% of the time I'm buying from merchants who I trust way more than I trust the other buyers. Don't even want credit card middlemen if I have the choice.
I don't trust either one.
And as a consumer, I especially hate PayPal because they always try to screw me with their currency conversion rates by hiding the toggle button (and it happens that I sometimes forget to toggle over to my bank's currency conversion)
And only once have I ever won a payment dispute there (and that was as a merchant, not a buyer... lol)
As a buyer I don't trust Paypal. They use dark patterns to try to get me to sign in, then make it hard to sign out, and for whatever reason my account is wedged and even though it has the correct payment details, the payments all fail. The UI is antiquated and the embedded version that has the animated progress bar GIF is sketchy at best. The Venmo app (which Paypal owns) is jammed with crappy ads and an often-broken UI.