what is paypal? PayPal is an abstraction later for accepting payments from different sources. Why don't people just use credit cards directly? From the consu

what is paypal? PayPal is an abstraction later for accepting payments from different sources. Why don't people just use credit cards directly? From the consumer's perspective, PayPal serves as a platform that stores their payment and shipping details in one place, meaning that in order to make a purchase from a new vendor they don't have to faff around with credit card numbers and shipping details on every purchase. From the vendor's perspective, PayPal is significantly less effort to integrate with than a traditional payments gateway. It means that vendors don't store card details themselves, which means compliance is easier. I've not used it as a vendor for years, but I understand it also provides things like basic order management. Stripe/square take care of pos Yes, but PayPal existed before either Stripe or Square, and provides substantially the same service. venmo/bitcoin handle peer-to-peer Not directly – a payment processor of some kind is still needed to fulfil the same use cases. Not to mention the extensive other difficulties with those systems. what is paypal's future? Pretty much the same as the other options. Don't get me wrong, PayPal has lost some of its moat and the Stripe API in particular is much nicer, but it provides substantially the same services as competitors, so there's not much reason to switch unless the offering from elsewhere is more attractive.