I think it's from people who are programmed from early e-commerce days to think using their credit card online is an extreme risk, and that Paypal is shielding them or insuring their purchase in some way. That said, I know some small nonprofits where that's their preferred way to donate online.

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internetter 17 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> and that Paypal is shielding them or insuring their purchase in some way

Yes, I absolutely do think that. When I make a purchase through paypal, I am redirected to an authorization page hosted on paypal's domain. The recipient never sees my card number. I must authorize each charge. Whereas when I give my card number, the recipient can charge whatever they want, whenever they want, however much they want*

* subject to fraud protection.

This matters because sites do get hacked. The paypal horror stories you see are typically not consumer sided.

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kragen 14 hours ago | parent [-]

These are mostly the same features Bitcoin/Ethereum provides to senders. But the cryptocurrency transactions are nonrepudiable, which is beneficial in some contexts (a friend of mine had his laptop stolen via a PayPal chargeback, and porn sites have had lots of problems opening and keeping credit card merchant accounts) and a drawback in others (the ripped clothing shipment mentioned in a sibling comment).

And of course the main feature of cryptocurrencies is that PayPal can't freeze your account when you try to withdraw money.

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internetter 14 hours ago | parent [-]

> These are mostly the same features Bitcoin/Ethereum provides to senders.

Sure, as does Apple & Google pay. I'm not saying PayPal is the only way, but I am frequently faced with either paypal or credit card, and in that situation I will do paypal every single time

	▲	kragen 14 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Right!

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Reason077 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I like to use PayPal when signing up for subscription services with recurring charges. It keeps billers that you have authorised in a nice list and you can cancel/deauthorise them directly from PayPal. No surprise charges months/years later from something you signed up for and forgot about...

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mastazi 16 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> that Paypal is shielding them or insuring their purchase in some way

this is absolutely the case for me, multiple times I had a great experience getting refunds with PayPal and multiple times I regretted not purchasing something using PayPal because getting a refund was much harder.

I now use PayPal exclusively for any online purchase > $500 precisely for this reason[1].

[1] unless it's a vendor that I know has a good return policy, such as JB HiFi.

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bze12 18 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Nonprofits are major targets of card testing fraud, I wonder if that is related