Hacker News Reader

Comment by qayxc | Hacker News Reader

Bad example - PayPal was the fruit of the (then) massively underdeveloped banking system in the US. Europe has SEPA and there was simply little to no need for something like PayPal. Whenever I hear that cheques are still in use in the US, I scratch my head, because outside of the UK I never used a cheque in my life.

View on HN

PayPal is used a lot in europe[1]. Maybe the Wirecard scandal could have been avoided if only someone had explained that SEPA makes any kind of fintech obsolete.

[1]: https://sifted.eu/articles/paypal-tops-european-downloads/

Nobody really uses it tough... it just gets downloaded for those one in a life time transfers that go outside the EU

Why is PayPal so popular in Europe then?[0] Significantly more popular than even Visa/MasterCard directly it seems.[1] I didn't even know the extent of it until just now but this is very surprising. 80-90% market share across various major countries.

[0] https://ecommercedb.com/news/paypal-usage-around-90-in-europ...

[1] https://ecommercenews.eu/top-3-payment-methods-per-european-...

Well, Paypal has been around for longer and works across the world, which explains some of it.

But I question the accuracy of these stats - I would expect to see SEPA wires and direct debit being significant everywhere, Multibanco and MBWay[0] in Portugal, TWINT in Switzerland, giropay in Germany, etc

Also, even if they are accurate, they rank Joe's homemade soap shop the same as a major retailer, and don't consider how many customers actually use each payment method.

[0]: https://www.marktest.com/wap/a/n/id~2985.aspx

Because credit cards have traditionally not been popular in Europe. Up to a certain age, my dad was the only person I knew had a credit card. For a long time, PayPal was the most straightforward way to deal with US merchants, because you can link it to an EU bank account.

I don’t actually know anyone who uses PayPal for anything but purchases outside the EU. Virtually all payments for online shopping here in The Netherlands are done using IDEAL (which is a system shared by all banks). When I lived in Germany, I did most online purchases through IBAN (you basically give your account number, do a 1 cent verification transaction and it is linked).

At any rate, IDEAL is so much better than dealing with all the PayPal crap or using credit cards. Select your bank, scan a QR code, confirm with Face ID and done.

Do your banks not issue debit cards? I understand credit cards being unpopular because the rewards are weak because the transaction fees are low but hard to see how either IDEAL or IBAN are superior to using a physical debit card that you can just tap, or a debit card added to Apple Wallet or equivalent. This will work the exact same way worldwide, whether you're in Europe, the Americas, or Asia, so I don't see how IDEAL is a superior system.

I am far, far from a PayPal fan but the ability to seamlessly deal with merchants across the globe from you seems like a pretty good value add. And again, you didn't dispute why PayPal is so popular in Europe.

Banks do Issue Debit Cards but up until recently you couldn’t use debit cards online.

For local, in person, transactions my experience tells me the ratio of Debit vs Credit has to be in the order of 10 to 1.

Again, that’s just my experience living in Italy in not a huge city.

But Europe is definitely not homogeneous so other people will probably have a differente experience.

As for getting paid by people across Europe, in my 10+ years as a freelancer I never had to rely on anything different than SEPA direct transfer.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com