I think the crux of it is that in many places in the world, credit cards are seen less like "temporary float" (like they are in the US) and more like "you pay f

I think the crux of it is that in many places in the world, credit cards are seen less like "temporary float" (like they are in the US) and more like "you pay for everything with a short term loan"? So CCs are a lot less common. Bank cards (debit) are a lot more common. But (and feel free to correct me on this) I think their fraud handling story is still not as good as the story on credit cards. So PayPal is seen as not-debt and also provides more fraud protection. And somehow despite their absurdly bad rap elsewhere, people look favorably upon the PayPal brand. And so here we are.