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.

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.