I'm from Europe and like Paypal a lot for paying for things online; much easier than using a credit card.
Paying with CC: typing the 16 digits of the CC, expiration date, 'CVC', and then having your phone nearby for confirmation. Happens on a myriad of forms from various providers that may or may not save or log the CC number. Many times the text message doesn't arrive on time on your phone, which makes the transaction fail. Or you have reached your credit card 'limit' and the transaction also fails (without you knowing why).
Paying with Paypal: username and password (or password only if the username is saved), done. Happens only on the Paypal website. Funds are withdrawn immediately from your bank account if you want. Never fails.
European here, can't agree at all. Never, ever had the confirmation SMS not arrive. Even when I have literally 0 bars signal and just wifi, it just works here.
Those few buys per week I can enter CC numbers directly, I don't mind since its my money being spent. Don't need some questionable middle man if I can avoid that.
Same here, Germany. PayPal with immediate bank transfer is usually a little more convenient. I use CC more often anyway to avoid the middle man, but when I feel lazy (wallet is not on my desk, oh no) or there is any hassle with CC, I use PayPal.
I also love the fact that it allows me to use a US credit card on EU websites that would otherwise block me from using non EU credit cards (by detecting BIN).
iDeal/Wero is nicer I think. It just reuses your bank basically. And no need to trust Paypal. I've seen way too many bad stories about that company. Either dispute handling wise or how they handle customer data. With iDeal/Wero I do not need yet another account.
It's crazy how much they have enshittified credit cards. It's not stuff like CVC, that's fine, but all the random failures! Nothing will turn me off your "payment system" more than having it randomly fail on me for utterly incomprehensible reasons when I'm simply trying to pay. It's five times worse when you are traveling, buying some small items in a shop and have it fail at the register.
I honestly don't know the last time I've had a credit card transaction fail, including internationally, unless I've fat-fingered some number. In fact, in my experience, random fraud failures are significantly less common than they used to be.
Less common but they still happen and except for a few banks that have modernized the failures are still much more cumbersome to deal with than necessary.
Worse I had stripe trip on me the other day which resulted in a "card declined" message but when I logged into the bank to authorize there was nothing there. Because apparently stripe decided not to even notify the bank of the suspected fraud. Thus there was seemingly no way for me to correct the error.
I can't even use tap to pay without either a physical chip from the bank or proprietary software. We've had ssh keys and oauth since ~forever there's no excuse for any of this.
Paying with CC: typing the 16 digits of the CC, expiration date, 'CVC', and then having your phone nearby for confirmation. Happens on a myriad of forms from various providers that may or may not save or log the CC number. Many times the text message doesn't arrive on time on your phone, which makes the transaction fail. Or you have reached your credit card 'limit' and the transaction also fails (without you knowing why).
Paying with Paypal: username and password (or password only if the username is saved), done. Happens only on the Paypal website. Funds are withdrawn immediately from your bank account if you want. Never fails.