Paypal only exists because the current infrastructure of payments in the US is a joke
Nobody needs paypal in Europe. Of course, they try to sell themselves as "the easiest way" (which is right to a point) but it's mostly unneeded
Nobody needs paypal in Europe. Of course, they try to sell themselves as "the easiest way" (which is right to a point) but it's mostly unneeded
Without Paypal a lot of european customers wouldn't be able to buy from international vendors.
It's a shitty company, with a shitty product.
Edit: EUR 0.00 annual fee, of course.
It's more or less the same here, almost no one has real credit card, they're mostly VISA (co-branded) or MasterCard branded debit cards, but everyone has a card that can be used online.
Er, no. Almost everyone has a branded debit card, as most banks will give you that for free, but nearly 75% of the country has at least one actual credit card.
Seriously, if you're european, try these guys out - they're worth it.
Not the case. Digging deeper [1] we can find this: The only conditions are that you're at least 18 years old and have a residential address in Germany or Austria.
https://support.number26.eu/read/000001280?locale=en
Pretty sure they have customers in Ireland (some discussion about stamp duty on debit cards few months ago)
Surprisingly large restaurants in Nuremberg do not take credit cards. A lot of German and Austrian small business owners see no good reason to pay the credit card companies the ~3% fee when most of their customers are perfectly happy to settle a 500 EUR bill in cash. Always pay your hotel bill in rural Austria the night before you leave to prevent an emergency dash to the village ATM :)
Well, and mostly to avoid paying taxes. Card acceptance cost is down to under 1% since last year and often depositing money costs more.
There is no requirement for proper cash registers here in Germany, so card acceptance remains low in small businesses.
* No Card-Not-Present-Transactions, because the cobranding is only for abroad
* Visa/MasterCard cobranding was not allowed until a few days ago (when the EU introduced new laws)
* Used to have high minimum fees (7 cents) for a long time, so expensive for smaller transactions
* Cashback only from 20€
* No damn contactless
=> Germanys banking sector is still mostly stuck back in 2000. Debit cards are around, but mostly for cash withdraws. Smaller transactions are mostly paid in cash, because they used to be expensive and no contactless.
The big banks have no interest in changing that, because as long as card payments are unpopular, they can charge >5€ for cash withdraws if you make "out-of-network" ATM withdraws.
tl;dr: Germany has its own shitty debit card system stuck in 2000 which sucks.
I love Germany, but the credit card thing drives me nuts. I understand Germans like financial privacy, but I like having an electronic record of my purchases instead of having to write down every cash transaction I make before I forget it. (If there was a way to get a prepaid EC Karte as a tourist, I might not mind so much.)
PS: The proper domain is paydirekt.de
Going via a payment provider, like Strip, PayPal, PayEx and a boat load of other companies, reduces your PCI compliance to a self assessment form, which talk all of 10 minutes to fill out.
But all banks will transfer money if you have a recipient account number and sort code.
In Europe (Germany and Austria from my experience), many online services specifically support bank transfers using an IBAN number. It does seem to take a little longer though for the money to process.
Anyone? Anyone in the UK? Or anyone in the UK with a Barclays or Natwest account? Paypal is still probably the quickest and easiest way to send money to 'anyone' in the world.
Typically 24h in the SEPA.
No need for handwritten pieces of paper
Merchants also seem to prefer PayPal because it gives them an instant payment confirmation.
Was never asked for this in Ireland, though they use an electronic token (because paper is outdated) if the transaction is outside of Ireland
We tried two other card providers before we found Stripe, and my inner cynic has been silenced. I strongly recommend them.
That's why we offer Stripe and Paypal in our store. Dropping Paypal would be insane as it is our most popular payment method, with Stripe coming in as a close second.
Every bank here does this.
But for other things it's ok
I still use Paypal quite a bit, but because it's simply convenient to use it and be able to change where my payments go from (which card/account etc.) without having to change what's on file with merchants.
For selling goods that you hand over (e.g. irrevocable product keys) it's much trickier and depends on the specific business whether it makes sense to have the customer wait.