this post was submitted on 01 Oct 2024
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Privacy
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Is it really that unusual to pay online with a debit/credit card? I would consider that the standard way and PayPal an option sometimes available.
To me, it is. I don't have a credit card - I never got one offered by my bank (...which makes one think...). Back in the "early days" (early 2000s - mostly on Ebay) it was quite common to recieve the bank information of the seller after purchase. Then I had to wire the money to the sellers' account. There was no online banking. It could take up to a week to wire the money. After the seller recieved the payment, the ordered item got sent with postal service. When Paypal was introduced, it was a game changer: the seller recieved the money instantly, and could send the purchased item right away.
PayPal didn't come to my country until after online banking was already established, so I probably get a different experience. Banks here also issue (Visa) debit cards for free with a standard no fee bank account, so pretty much everyone has one. Debit cards being like a credit card in terms of paying online, but it uses money in your account.
Our biggest ebay-like site has their own payment portal for instant payments, done to copy what eBay did with paypal except you can't use it outside of paying for things you bought on that site. But people are generally paying wuth a debit/credit card. And bank transfers are very common, but I wasn't buying stuff online in 2001 so I'm not sure what it was like then.
Even today, paying with paypal in my country is far more likely to be a credit/debit card payment than a bank account one.
If your bank doesn't offer virtual credit cards (or they're a pain to use) and you don't want to sign up with another service, then yeah - PayPal is safer to give than your credit card number.
In my experience, sites aren't implementing their own credit card payments. Paypal and Stripe are common, and there are a couple of local payment portals as well.
If it's not one of those I probably wouldn't use it, but in general it would never be the case that you can't pay with a credit card, where as PayPal is probably an option 1/3 of the time.