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Comment by martin-t | Hacker News Reader

I once read that PayPal was not successful outside the US because people outside the US couldn't understand why not just do a normal bank transfer. PayPal realized this and tried lobbying governments outside the US to make bank transfers harder.

No idea if this claim is true. How do Americans transfer money? Don't your banking apps allow that?

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I don't know if that Paypal story is true, but that definitely is the situation with Intuit/TurboTax in America.

> How do Americans transfer money? Don't your banking apps allow that?

If the exchange isn't online and is a fairly large amount of money, something like buying a car, checks (cheques) or even envelopes of cash are a lot more common than PayPal. Online, those aren't easy so that's where Paypal and their competitors shine. Americans also now use other apps for small money exchanges, like paying somebody for mowing your lawn, although refusing the app and offering/demanding cash is still relatively normal.

As far as I can remember, Paypal was successful in Europe because of the tie-in with Ebay and because bank transfers at time were slow thanks to asynchronous settlement. SEPA fixed that, I don't know how much lobbying in the EU was involved but I'm certain payment processors eschewing banking regulation hastened it (the same way the push for WERO and the Digital Euro is coming from the problematic VISA/MasterCard duopoly).

Most banking apps now allow that using Zelle but it came many years after PayPal.

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