PayPal originally took off as it was convenient and fast, saving you from filling in card details each time and it also allowed sending payments for private transactions using only an email address

Since then Apple Pay/Google pay/browser wallets have taken a big chunk of its fast checkout advantage

And mobile banking apps/instant transfer have taken out chunks of the private transactions, and more so as consumer to consumer transactions often had the parties using PayPal gift mode to avoid fees but that then had zero protection.

The 2020’s is much more crowded than 1990’s and 2020’s decades

Also it was its partnership with eBay that made it dominant and eBay no longer promote PayPal as preferred payment method.

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slv77 2 days ago | parent [-]

PayPal also allowed internet payments without requiring handing over credit card details to a third party. Handing your credit card number to every two-but e-commerce site pretty much guaranteed your card would be compromised. Today PCI requirements and tokenization reduce the risks substantially and Apple Pay and Google Pay add another layer of protection.

	▲	ethbr1 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		Apparently first mover advantage (with about a decade head start?) still counts for a lot. https://www.chargeflow.io/blog/paypal-statistics-facts#paypa... That estimates PayPal still has 40%+ online payment market share. I'm assuming a lot of that is long-tail 'I put a PayPal link on my store in 2005' stuff, but I imagine those add up. And they're also probably a sticky customer base, in the sense that anyone still using PayPal as primary today doesn't like changing things, which makes acquiring those customers worth it.